The Very Modern Family

This evening I met Milo's dad's new girlfriend. It was a first having it this way around. His dad has met the 3 men I've dated since Milo was born and I have met a woman who was in his life but she was never crowned his girlfriend as such but tonight I met the new woman in Milo's life. I wasn't sure how I would find it but I am happy to say that it all went rather smoothly. It wasn't just us there which helped, there was a gathering of sorts to celebrate Milo's dad's birthday and I was there in short attendance to pick Milo up and to hang around for a bit as I knew a number of the attendees. I was very bemused to discover that said girlfriend was English! Oh yes. How I laughed inwardly (and also a bit too loudly outwardly when I discovered for sure that the British girl in the other room was the one he is dating), although please don't think that he is going for a doppelganger or anything, we couldn't be any more different. She was very sweet though and we chatted for quite a bit about her time here in Berlin (she's a relative newcomer) and about language learning and the like (all said in German I must add). There was no interaction with Milo as such as he was far too busy playing with his Eisenbahn (wooden train set) in the room next door but I am quite happy to think there'll be another person in Milo's life who can speak English to him and I even said this to her as we were leaving, asking for her to please converse with him in English rather then German, hopefully she'll keep it up.

On the way home I was thinking about how easy it was and about how things were when 'The Englander' was on the scene and what a very modern family we have become and I am quite happy about it. No, it's not the kind of family situation that I imagined for myself and yes of course I would have rather had a family in the traditional way without all this single parenting malarky but after Milo was born I did hope that at some point we would be able to have family events in which I would be there with my partner and Milo's dad would be there with his partner and it would all work and I reckon that we are actually at a point in which that could be possible. For me, whilst there are certainly down sides to having separated parents, when done in a civil way, there are also some real plus sides. Milo will (hopefully) not just have two special people in his life parenting him but possibly four and with that extra Grandparents and cousins and all that comss with that. That to me is a big plus. If four people can love him so much then I think that's brilliant for him. It is of course important that I like the other woman in his life but with what I saw from tonight, and I know you can only tell so much from a first meeting but still, I don't see why I wouldn't like her.

All this made me think of an article I read during the week on 'The Huffington Post England' website titled 'More Than 80% of Families are Non-Traditional, Research Finds'. Check it out and see what you think.

Are you living in a non-traditional family set up? How do you find it? What do you consider are the upsides and the downsides? I'd be interested to hear your views.

I love to read your comments so please feel free to let me know what you think...