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

Journalists routinely don't know the difference between half-siblings and step-siblings.

Maybe he's an avid reader?

No i wouldn't have known if it wasn't said on here. My mother told me as a kid. I had no reason to question it. And the subject has never come up.

I've just had to Google to be sure. I'm not stupid but I am from a very small family where we have neither.
Fostering, adoption and being non-contact are my experiences. No siblings of any variety.

I didn’t say you did

My point was that if they’re not terms you use regularly then you may well have to think about it a bit more than someone who does use them regularly.

I know full well what the difference is but if I had to explain the relationship of my dad’s sisters to him, I’d have to properly think about whether they were step or half sisters because it’s just not something I ever really think about.

I am 56. I did not know the difference between the two terms for a very long time into adult hood. I thought i had step siblings, but came to understand they were half siblings. The term didn't matter either way as as far as I am concerned, they are my siblings

I'm from a small family without blending but I've read things like books or news articles on or watched TV programmes with different family set ups. It's unusual for this to pass someone by completely.

Two of my grandsons have the same mum but different dads, maybe because they have the same mum i just think of them as brothers. Not sure if i would think that if they had different mums🤔

My two boys are technically half brothers (different fathers) but consider themselves brothers, as do I simply because they started life in the same place, my body. To me they are closer than two having the same father. Just the way I think.

I have two kids by different dads, I rarely think about the half because they have been brought up together all their lives as I was with my full siblings. My sons sister is in his life, we send her cards saying happy birthday to my sister from both kids but we acknowledge its not the same.

I'm surprised people don't know the difference TBH.

I know it's common on MN, but lots of people don't have any experience of step or half-siblings and would have no reason to know what the differences are.

My friend has several of both and despite knowing them for plus 40 years I still get muddled.

My youngest technically has 4 half siblings but as far as she's aware she has 3 siblings. The different dad is irrelevant, they are my 4 dc. I've only once heard one use half sibling and the other 2 objected strongly. Other one is a dc her dad has that he had no contact with (I only found out they existed after we separated). They may all be half siblings but the relationship is very very different.

I can fully understand someone not wanting to use half sibling for someone they didn't grow up with.

If they haven't got step or half siblings and never had the meaning explained it would be easy not to know. You don't know things by magic you know the things you encounter or are taught, and even then people explain incorrectly often because they don't really know something themselves. Second cousin twice removed anyone, I only know some of those type of relationships from playing with family trees.

I work as a medical secretary and there are loads of hospital consultants (very much including non-foreign ones) who don't know the difference and dictate letters which include the medical history for a supposed 'step-brother/sister'. Not sure if the AI we are being replaced with is going to be smart enough to spot and correct this!

There are many step-parents and step-siblings in fairytales. Cinderella for example. Surely everyone knows what a step-sibling is (unrelated, brought together by parental marriage) as a result?

Half-sibling is self-explanatory.

Have a proper think about ?
Half siblings shsre one parent that can be either the mother or father hence hslf siblings
Step siblings dont share any biological parent
One childs mother maybe married to the other childs father or vice versa

Yes i know the difference no i dont expext anyone else to do so

Yes i am tired of the endless 'i expect' threads people are not all the same stamping your foot doesn't mean everyone thinks the same

No i dont care if my spelling or grammar is correct or not

DW is dyslexic and really struggles with relationship names like this - eg she will say DH sister's daughters rather than "my nieces".

Has been known to refer to me my name, rather than "dad" when speaking to DC.

Like a lot of dyslexic things I have learned to let it go - but it is a bit triggering.

Wether they want to or not its biologically wrong.to call them step
My sons know they have a half sister who they dont see for various reasons they are still biologicol half siblings

My Oxbridge educated dh didn’t know what to call my sister’s sons. He thought they were “nephews in law”. I suspect he would also be a bit slow on the uptake about half and step siblings (as a half sibling may also be a step child of a new spouse : that would make him stop for a minute).

To me it’s obvious but dh has made me realise there some people just don’t instinctively get some things like that.

YABU. I’m sure he knows lots of things you don’t know, and I’m sure you know lots of things he doesn’t know. Shaming someone for what they don’t know sounds like a great way to discourage them from asking questions and learning new things.

I'd expect people to be able to work it out if pushed, but different families sometimes use different terms for the same things. My step-niece has people she refers to as sisters/brothers and others she refers to as half-sister/brothers. Technically they are all her half-siblings but she lives in a house with some and not others.

I know the difference but it's not so instinctive that I dont have to take a second to remind myself which each one is. It's just unfamiliarity. I hail from a family and frindship group that doesnt have any bleneded families.

I got chatgpt to tell me last night. It took it ages . It was actually laughing at me 💀

Anyway it said half is if one biological link it doesn't matter if its the mother or father.

It gave the example of if Bob was married to Sarah they have a child . Bob and Sarah end their relationship. Sarah the gets married to mark. Sarah's children would then be his step children and any children mark had before getting married would be Sarah's children step siblings because theres no biological link.

So step siblings no biological link
Half siblings biological link to one pf the parents.

Well, to complicate it further - my sister and I share a mother but not a biological father.

My father adopted her, however. So, legally, she is my full sister, but biologically half sister.

She has a father (until quite recently) as well as my dad.

My dad took great exception when she referred to him as her stepdad, and her kids referred to him as their step-granddad. The latter did feel quite unnecessary to be honest.

We grew up together only until I was seven, and so she was never really part of my wider family and didn't go to the same schools as me, so kids at school never believed I had a sister.

I do just call her my sister and her kids are my niece and nephew.