Jodie Sweetin is known for playing Stephanie Tanner in one of television’s most beloved families, but it’s only recently that she’s decided to open up about her own.
Sweetin, 40, explained in a new interview how she was adopted.
“It’s an interesting story, and actually, I think it’s a story that happens a lot. People don’t really talk about it, because I think there’s this weird sense of shame if there’s an interfamily adoption.”
After having kept quiet about her own family for years, Sweetin felt it was finally time to open up about her upbringing.
She shared her story on the “Conversations With Olivia Jade” podcast.
Sweetin explained to Olivia Jade, her former co-star Lori Loughlin’s daughter, that her adoptive parents had a connection to her biological parents.
She said that her father, Sam, first noticed Sweetin at his ex-wife Rose’s home. They shared three adult children together.
“(Rose) was my biological father’s aunt,” she said. “(Sam) would go over there to check on her, check on the house, make sure things were working right, whatever. He was still around that family, and he saw me there.”
At the time, Sam and his second wife, Janice, were trying to start a family, but they experienced some complications.
“So it wound up that they were able to adopt me sort of through that chain.”
She was adopted when she was nine months old; however, the adoption was reportedly not finalized until she was two years old because her father was one-fourth Native American.
Growing up she didn’t have a relationship and “never connected” with her biological parents, and at times she blamed herself for being adopted. But eventually she came to realize her parents made the best decision for her.
“There’s this point in your life where you finally kind of realize what happened. That it no longer becomes something about you, that it’s like, ‘Oh, I wasn’t wanted,’” she said during a 2021 interview. “It was like, ‘No, they actually made the healthiest decision for me by allowing me to be adopted by another family that could provide better.’”
While many people who are adopted search for their biological family later in life, Sweetin has no plans.
“As far as I know, they’re not alive, and I’m totally OK with that.”
The only plans she has is to continue raising her two daughters using the same approach her on-screen dad, the late Bob Saget used with all the children of Full House.
“I remember Bob just being really inclusive of his kids, and he didn’t talk to them like they were idiots” Sweetin said. “And he did the same with me. He treated me with respect as a young person, and so did John (Stamos) and Dave (Coulier). I understood that when I had kids, you can joke with them, you can have real conversations.”
It’s awesome that Jodie Sweetin is talking about her kind of adoption. Maybe it will show others that there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Please share with all the Jodie Sweetin fans you know.
