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It’s no secret that ‘family’ can be a contentious topic. Because while many societies idealise the nuclear family with a married mom and dad, with two or three perfect children, and a wonderfully supportive extended family on both sides, that simply is not the reality for many people.

It is the twenty first century, and we’re done with shaming people for their origins. In any group of people, sure there will be plenty with married, biological parents. Others will be from a single-parent family, may have lost a parent, or may not even know who one of their parents is. They could have two mothers or two fathers, a co-parenting situation, or even a father who used to be a mother or a mother who used to be a father.

They could have foster parents, or live with their grandparents, aunts or uncles. Perhaps they have been adopted and consider their adoptive parents to be their mom and dad, or maybe both their adoptive and biological parents have equal value in their eyes. Maybe they’re orphaned, or maybe they have a found family made up of close friends they’ve built a life with. Perhaps they’ve decided to go no contact with their family – yes, even that nuclear family – for their own mental health. Or maybe they simply don’t want to be characterized by those who raised them.

So in the twenty first century, school projects that focus on family must be inclusive. Because, as the woman in this story explained, a toxic focus on biological family is not only upsetting and problematic for many, it might have unwanted negative repercussions.

Read on to find out more.

AITA for having my daughter write a ‘morbid’ school family tree project?

My biological family are all dead. I was raised in foster care, and so my friends are my family.

I met my late husband in college. He was just raised by his mother, who had abandoned him and later died (no adoptive family).

As an adult, I’ve looked into both trees and our biological ancestors are, to put it mildly, really dangerous people and/or dead.

My late husband and older son died in a car crash.

She had concerns about her daughter’s school project.

My daughter is in kindergarten and she, more accurately me, was supposed to do a family tree project for school.

I tried speaking to her teacher that this was not going to be a Pollyanna report, but she is one of those people that can’t comprehend that sometimes family is a dark subject, and insisted that it needed to be biological.

So, I did it.

Read on to find out how she managed to bring a family tree together.

Some of them, like her father and my son, I have actual information for aside from that they’re dead.

But for most of my family and her paternal family, I literally only have birth date, death date, when they would have had their kids, and cemetery information, unless they were cremated.

It was supposed to have ten pictures, but most of the pictures I have of any ancestors are just headstones. I made a trip when my husband and I first married to take pictures of the headstones, so I included those in there.

I only have three pictures total of my biological family, and most of them are group shots where I could only label maybe three people. I don’t have any pictures of my late husband’s family from before me and my kids, but I put some of the old ones in there too.

Yikes. Let’s see how this honest family tree went down with the school

So while the other kids had long family trees, my daughter was basically introducing the concept of death to her kindergarten class.

Now I’m getting slammed with calls from other parents, the teacher, and the principal. They’re appalled that I allowed such a “morbid” report and are saying I traumatized their children.

But I don’t think I did anything wrong. They wanted a report on her biological ancestors, I gave it, and kept it G-rated. I just didn’t lie that people were alive when they weren’t.

I don’t raise her to think that death is taboo or something to be ashamed of anyway. Death is part of life. Most of her/my family is dead, so talking about family just means talking about death, and it’s just something you have to accept.

AITA?

This woman did absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, she raised her concerns but was knocked back, so completed the project accordingly.

The real problem here is the teacher who didn’t listen to the issue the mother had.

If anyone is in the wrong here, it’s her.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that this was not the mother’s fault.

While others pointed out how discriminatory and potentially hurtful the project was.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that kids needed to learn about death, and that shaming the family this way was completely unfair.

The truth is that death is a big part of the reality of life for this family. They have been extremely unlucky, sure, but now they’re living their best lives and surrounding themselves with good people who are proving that family does not need to be related by blood to be valid. Because this little girl isn’t growing up with just her mom and nobody else. The people in her life seem to be friends who are as good (if not better) than biological uncles and aunts, and she shouldn’t be made to question whether the folks around her are as ‘valid’ as the biologically related folk around her kindergarten friends.

Not to mention the fact that this project could be really upsetting for a child, or a parent, who has been adopted and is suddenly being told that their family shouldn’t be considered family because they’re not biological. It could bring up some unpleasant people that the parents have distanced themselves from. Really, with the parameters being so tight, anything could happen. And in not allowing the ‘rules’ of the project to be flexible, the teacher and the school have been quite irresponsible, they’ve only brought this upon themselves.

As for the parents shaming this mother for sharing the reality of their family with the kids? Shame on them too. This should be a reminder to them of how lucky they are to have good people, still alive, around them – it is not an excuse to discriminate and attack a mother for doing her best in an unfortunate situation.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a woman who was in love with her dream house – and then spring came and her neighbor’s trees caused her to question the purchase.