Reply #31: Although I have a child, a daughter adopted from China

[LibertyLover]

I was treated by many family members as somehow less than an adult for years. I had made the choice to live with my mother because she had some health issues and so for years was treated very much as a child. Then I got married and the family began to treat me differently. I can't quite put it into words but it was there. When we brought our daughter, newly brought to the US from China, to her first family Thanksgiving, it was like I had finally arrived. When I first got engaged, married friends began to treat me differently too. And after I got married, my single friends melted away in spite of me actively trying to maintain friendships, one or two of which I still miss even after 12 years of marriage. It was odd, because I don't think that I do that. I have a 40 year old cousin who is single and childless and a nurse-practitioner in the NICU at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. If I ever treated her as less than an adult, I would be the poorer for it.