It’s impossible to look at a person and know exactly what their home life is objectively.

Whether their parents are divorced or married, they have a lot of siblings or none at all.

Maybe they go back and forth between two homes or don’t live with their biological parents or their parents were never married or are LGBTQ.

For freshman Amy Chase, she’s the middle of five kids.

“It’s fun being in a big family because there is always someone to hang out with,” she said. 

But because she’s got younger siblings, she has to babysit once a week while her parents go on a date. Chase usually gets paid around $5 an hour for taking care of her younger siblings.

 She doesn’t mind because she actually likes her parents. 

“They’re like my friends,” Chase said. “And my dad and I just had a hangout session and I went shopping with my mom.”

Chase’s parents have been together for about 20 years and are still going strong. They’re able to maintain a healthy relationship together and with their kids. 

The number of marriages that make it to 20 years is slightly under 50%, according to mymodernlaw.com. The same site said that up to 50% of children will end up with divorced parents. In the 1960s, though, almost 9 in 10 kids under 18 lived with their two married parents, as said by pewresearch.org. 

“Having divorced parents was tougher when I was younger, but I’m used to it now, so it’s OK,” freshman Michaela Blankenship said. 

Blankenship has specific days where she’s at each parent’s house. 

“I have stuff at both houses,” she said. 

Having items at both houses can make things easier overall. Yet, it’s typically to still forget things needed for school, thus making school more challenging.

“I can forget my Chromebook or something I need for school at the other parent’s house,” Blankenship said.

Junior Emma Kimmel is adopted.

“I’m happy that I was adopted, I don’t regret it,” she said.

Her biological parents informed her that she was getting adopted when she was 11 years old. After hearing this, she became excited to meet her new family and hoped they would be kind, welcoming people. 

“I was really excited to be with my parents and I was really excited about the idea of becoming a part of their family. It made me feel really happy to find out they wanted me,” Kimmel said.

She still had her challenges growing up different from her fellow peers.

“I think there were some definite challenges, but it’s just become normal to me,” Kimmel said.

Many people have different situations they’re living in that nobody would guess prior to getting to know them as a person.

Junior Skyla Judkins said, “I think it is so disrespectful to judge somebody’s family life because you don’t know what that person is going through at home… also you don’t know how that will make the other person feel.”