AIBU to expect my boyfriend to know the difference between step and half siblings

anyone**
🫣

I'm not so sure - some of these replies are reading like how would a normal person possibly know this - instead of wow that's quite a big distinction, I didn't realise .
Imagine someone on here saying they have no idea who the prime minister is or which continent the UK is in and then everyone else piling on to agree that well it's not that important, we can't know everything - that's how I'm interpreting replies.

I'm not trying to shame anymore, please believe that, but I also don't want ignorance to become acceptable - I'm embarrassed when I don't know something really obvious.

It's meant as explanation rather than celebration. Which is reasonable when the question at the outset is how could someone not be particularly familiar with the difference.

I agree that we can't know everything, but it's the almost celebratory attitude of not knowing something and deeming it not important enough because it doesn't affect me that's so bothersome .

You could literally date, marry and have children with a step sibling and if you didn't know the difference between step and half , this could be a very big deal and cause people to think you were some kind of weirdo perv😄.

I don't have much experience of step or half siblings but it doesn't mean I don't understand what the terms mean, it's not hard.

Do people not know how babies are made?

Yeah. 3 masters degrees would confirm I'm thick.
Like I said, I can get there if I think about it. Like I can name several kinds of dinosaur if I think about it. And even chemical formulae . It just isn't something that comes up in my day to day life and step siblings occur in my reality as often as t-rexes.
I read widely but I'm more interested in people and personalities than the naming if the relationship between them.
I think you might just have to accept that other people have different experiences from you, and that's ok.

I can see why people who don’t have any experience of blended families don’t get it immediately, but then I always refer to my half brother only as my brother (and DH’s half-sister is just his kid Sister) so I suppose we don’t help matters.

Don't people read?

Knowing that the word half sibling means someone is half a sibling aka one shared parent isn’t details. It’s basic knowledge of both human relationships and words. Half Sibling is a half sibling it’s hardly rocket science. Step is slightly trickier but childhood stories have enough stepmothers that you’d think knowing it meant by marriage was picked up by anyone who ever watched or read Cinderella.

If you can’t pick up and remember those two words you are, I’m afraid, possibly thick or, as I said, incredibly incurious.

Absolutely this. Bowls, football, Motorsport, naming of parts of other people's families. Not remotely curious.

Much more interested in aunt Agatha's shenanigans, whether she's a friend of auntie Mary's, an actual biological aunt or a random really 3x removed. People interest me and individuals I care about. Labeling the relationships between them not so much.

Some people are just a bit thick or else incurious and don’t care to know things.

They won't be common in some families. No one in my (huge) extended family either side has step or half siblings, and there's just one one group of half-siblings in DP's huge extended family. I'd probably have to think for a moment if introduced to someone's half or step sibling. And I'm quite intelligent as far as I know ;)

I think if you don’t have step or half siblings it could be an easy mistake to make if you’re not familiar. But it’d be a cold day in hell before I referred to my brother as my half brother, even if he technically is!

lol . Yep .

No, but you know now that it’s wrong.

No reason to have a relationship from my DM point of view, I had a step mother so therefore I had step sisters, it is of no importance and genuinely not deep

To be fair I am genuinely surprised, I don’t know who told me but for example children’s books often refer to “wicked step mothers” or films/tv programs etc..

Do you mean your mum referred to your Dads children with another partner as step siblings?
Did they have a good relationship at all? I have heard of women who won’t recognise the fact other parents other children as being related to their own.

Very true. So many people are confused by so many things these days. One could be forgiven for thinking they must be a bit dense.

It's a good job you're not judgemental, isn't it?

I can get there if I think about it, but it's an abstract concept rather than one I can hang names onto. I don't have friends with half or step siblings so it's not like I have an innate sense of Sarah and Louise are half siblings but Joanne is their step siblings.

On my mother's side I'm 4th generation only child. DH is the child of 2 only children. Siblings are a rarity in our family.
I'm also adopted so family trees aren't really my thing because I'm not related to anyone I know except my children.

None of me, my wife, my kids, my sister, her kids, my parents, my wife's parents etc etc have step brothers and sisters of half- brothers and sisters.

I'm not sure I could confidently immediately know the difference.

Stepbrothers and sisters: the children of your new parent that aren't your blood relations.

Half-brothers or sisters: siblings where you share a mum or dad, but not both.

That's it, right?

People are, to me, weirdly dense sometimes on stuff like this. But I'm like the systematising side of things, and not everyone is like that. I'm always bemused at people making out that second cousins is too complicated a relationship to understand. Plus there's the thing where some people consider 'half sibling' to be offensive somehow because it invalidates the relationship. It's just a factual thing to me. Sure it may not matter day to day and you may just say 'my brother'. But he's still technically a half brother if you only share one parent.

That makes sense. I saw that when I was teaching.

Sorry - I'm not always good at spotting hyperbole and I promise that I wasn't being snarky, in any case. I find that I'm not very good at conveying tone online. It was more the idea of "Here's an (un?) interesting fact."

I blame my OCD. feels compelled to add that she genuinely has OCD and is not being flippant

Darn it, I knew my hyperbolic inclusion of ‘anywhere’ might come back to bite me!