Soap Tropes: These Are Soap Operas’ Most Committed Stepparents

Soap operas regularly use different tropes in telling their daily stories. Soap Hub examines them and their use in our series — Soap Tropes. In the third installment, New York Times bestselling author Alina Adams examines how much stepparents love their stepchildren even after the marriage to their biological parent is over.

Step Parents’ Love

When Chance (Conner Floyd) and Summer (Allison Lanier) had their date on The Young and the Restless this week, one of the topics they covered was child-rearing. Summer talked about the challenge of getting Harrison to brush his teeth. Chance told a story about Dominic throwing a fit when Chance wouldn’t buy him a drum set. Neither one discussed that the tots in question were not actually their children. (At least Chance is Dom’s legal father and once intended to be his only one. Summer isn’t even Harrison’s stepmother anymore.) But they’re not the only ones in soap-dom to love adopted children like their own, and sometimes even more than their own.

On Y&R, there was also Neil (Kristoff St. John), who continued to love Lily (Christel Khalil) even after the truth about her paternity came out and supported her — going so far as to move to be closer to her when she was in prison — much more than his actual biological child, Moses (Jacob Aaron Gaines). Here are a few of our other favorite daytime stepparents who love children who aren’t biologically theirs as much or more than their own children.

All Grown Up

Eric (John McCook) only discovered that Ridge (Thorsten Kaye) wasn’t biologically his on The Bold and the Beautiful when Ridge was already an adult. And they’d already tussled over Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang). Eric decided to ignore it and keep treating Ridge like his own. Even when they fight over Quinn (Rena Sofer). Eric is the most understanding non-dad ever!

I Know What’s Mine

Sonny (Maurice Benard) was so determined to be Michael’s (Chad Duell) father that he forced AJ to sign away his parental rights while swinging on a meat hook. (Of course, Sonny isn’t so happy now.) And Michael continues to be Sonny’s favorite, no matter how many children — mostly daughters, blech — Sonny has with other people. But let’s see if he’ll be as forgiving as Eric when the truth comes out about Michael hiring Dex (Evan Hofer) to bring Daddy down.

Yours, Mine, and Hours

On Days of our Lives, not only did Marlena (Deidre Hall) love and raise Brady (Eric Martsolf) like her own when she married John (Drake Hogestyn), but there were also all those years that John, thinking he was Roman (Josh Taylor), raised Carrie (Christie Clark), Sami (Alison Sweeney), and Eric (Greg Vaughan) as a single dad, while Marlena was presumed dead. Even after the truth came out and Roman returned, John still thought of Roman’s kids as his own (while respecting Roman’s position). And he puts up with nonsense from Sami that we doubt he’d ever tolerate from Brady or Belle (Martha Madison).

Favorite Son

Alan (Ron Raines) knew he’d illegally adopted Phillip (Grant Aleksander) on Guiding Light, even when Phillip didn’t. Alan also knew that Alan-Michael (Rick Hearst) was his biological child. But he didn’t care. Phillip would always be the apple of Alan’s eye, the favorite he’d do anything to protect. Alan-Michael…could fend for himself.

One To Go

As the World Turns‘ Lucinda (Elizabeth Hubbard) was the same. She doted, spoiled, and obsessed over her adopted daughter Lily (Martha Byrne). At the same time, she left her biological daughter Sierra (Mary Beth Evans) to be raised by her dad in an obscure South American country. When it came to Lily’s son, Luke (Van Hansis), adoptive dad Holden (Jon Hensley) sure fretted more about him than he did about his and Lily’s biological kids, Faith, Natalie, and Ethan.

Work For It

On All My Children, Tad (Michael E. Knight) caused adoptive parents Ruth (Mary Fickett) and Joe (Ray MacDonnell), and grandma Kate (Kay Campbell) way, way more grief than perfect, biological, miracle baby Joey/Jake (Ricky Paull Goldin). Then why did we constantly get the feeling they preferred Tad? Tad must have taken his family’s lesson in love trumping biology to heart, loving Dixie’s (Cady McClain) son, JR (Jacob Young), despite the boy being fathered by arch-enemy Adam (David Canary).

Over on One Life to Live, it was the same for Clint (Jerry verDorn) and Viki’s (Erika Slezak) sons, Kevin and Joey, and Blair (Kassie DePaiva) with Sam, the son Todd (Roger Howarth) was forced to have with a crazy woman. Throw in Another World’s Mac’s (Douglass Watson) raising both of Rachel’s (Victoria Wyndham) sons, Jamie (Russell Todd) and Matthew (Matt Crane), like his own, and that’s a bunch of terrific adoptive fathers!

All I Need

Finally, Santa Barbara‘s Gina (Robin Mattson) was a terrible, selfish, scheming, lying, and manipulative person. She had precisely one redeeming quality: Her true, sincere, all-encompassing, unconditional, and devoted love for her adopted son Brandon (Justin Gocke). The boy singlehandedly redeemed Gina’s existence as a human being.