I agree wholeheartedly with the posters saying in a lot of ways half siblings that don't live together full time are more like cousins than full siblings. Neither description totally fits because half siblings in a non nuclear family are their own thing that can't and don't need to be jammed into the mould of a family that adults like this poster are more comfortable with, and incidentally passing on that anxiety to the kids is not helpful to them at all. But somewhere between the two would be quite close.
Absolutely. There are differences, but in many cases a comparison to (close) cousins rather than full siblings is more realistic. They only share some family. They live in different houses where there may well be different rules and expectations.
obviously there are some key differences - and there will be variation in different non-nuclear family set ups.
I guess the key point is that pretending there are no differences between full siblings and half siblings (and particular differences where they are NR half siblings even beyond resident half siblings) is not helpful. There is actually nothing wrong with being half siblings. It’s not a lesser relation, but it is a different one in some quite important ways.
It’s like do many things in stepfamilies. The dominance of the nuclear family norm and peoples insistence on it as the measure for things causes so many problem. We see it time and time again on here: they are your family, they are siblings, it’s their home too, and so on. Yes - all of these things are true but they are very much shaped by a range of factors.
They are your family. They are basically children-in-laws rather than children to stepparents. You wouldn’t expect people to relate to their MIL and their mum in the same way. We don’t expect SC to relate to SMs as they do to their mother either. But somehow expect SMs to operate as if it’s not an in-law relationship where there is a key person in the SC’s lives in the parallel role (the fact they have a mother is important - it’s still important where she’s no longer alive).
They are siblings. As we are saying, it does make a difference whether they are full, half or step siblings. It matters how much contact there is. In all sorts of ways. The distinction matters to everyone related to any of the children. There’s no single right way to handle the differences, but pretending they don’t exist is rarely helpful. It just becomes the elephant in the room in various ways.
And it is their home. But it’s not their only home. It often isn’t even their main home. All of this does make a difference in various ways. Especially when they have parents who simultaneously insist that ‘it’s their home’ but then treat them like visiting dignitaries rather than residents. The NRP cake and eating it tendency is never helpful.
Nor is the stepfamily animal farm version of equality. Very often on these boards we see variations of a logic that is absolutely ‘all children are equal but nonresident stepchildren are more equal’ (because they are victims of their non-nuclear family).
None of it is helpful. There’s nothing wrong with being a stepfamily. You can be open about the different relationships and roles within it - and actually celebrate the differences. Even where it’s the case that some half siblings have more generous grandparents than others.
On MN is generally only controversial if it’s the Nonresident SC who appear to be getting less. It’s fine if they have wealthy and generous maternal grandparents. Or live in a more affluent household where they get taken on loads of holidays. It only seems to become a problem if their are or half siblings are benefitting from generous grandparents etc. Because animal farm…