Serving the people of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee
Family feels blessed to have been united through adoption
Margaret Plevak - Special to Parenting
GERMANTOWN - Besides the usual remarks about a baby's age, size or sheer cuteness that doting strangers often make to parents, Sue Daniel commonly heard one question while holding her son Zachary in line at the supermarket or waiting at the pediatrician's office.
"What country is he from?"
"To which I'd answer, 'Milwaukee,'" Sue Daniel said, laughing.
It was a comment that Sue, 37, and her husband, Scott Daniel, 36, who are Caucasian, weren't altogether unprepared for when they adopted Zachary, 3, a biracial mix of Caucasian and African-American, through Lutheran Counseling and Family Services of Wisconsin (LCFS) a little over two years ago. Since then the Daniels have also adopted Michael, 1, another biracial baby, through Catholic Charities.
The strangers' remarks didn't really faze her, Sue admitted. She was too awed at being a parent. When they married in 1985, Sue, an obstetrics nurse at Milwaukee's Sinai-Samaritan Medical Center, and Scott, an engineering field coordinator for the City of Mequon, expected to have children of their own. But as the years passed without a pregnancy, the couple sought medical help, and discovered fertility problems. They spent the better part of two years trying to conceive using in-vitro fertilization.
Everything seemed to be looking fine, but then the process failed and the couple realized they were heavily in debt and emotionally spent, Scott said.
The Daniels, who are Lutheran, were determined to have children. They'd discussed adoption after learning they were infertile, but the agencies they investigated weren't accepting adoptive parents at the time, so the idea was shelved until a relative connected them with LCFS. The agency provided the couple with a home study for the pending independent adoption of a Hmong infant. When the adoption fell through, the counselor who'd been working with them asked if they'd consider adopting a biracial baby through an agency program.
Although she knew little about the Hmong culture, Sue said childhood exposure to other ethnic groups through her father's food brokerage business on Milwaukee's north side, and the cross section of cultures she meets daily as a nurse made her comfortable with the idea of raising a biracial baby. Scott, who counts African-Americans among his circle of friends, said the couple was more concerned about parenthood than race.
"When the counselor told us we'd be on the top of their list for that type of adoption, we jumped at the chance," Scott said. "If we couldn't have our own biological children, who cares what their skin color is? A child is a child, and we decided we could make a good home for any child."
"While we were going through the adoption process, my biggest fears and concerns were, was I going to be OK as a mom? How was I going to do loving someone else's child?" said Sue, gently bouncing Michael on her knee in the dining room of the family's home. "I knew I'd be OK at it, but I wondered if it was going to be the way I pictured. When Zach's placement occurred, I don't remember thinking he looked different or strange. It just seemed right. And all the fears I had went away.
"I think initially you go through an adoption because you're missing something. When we adopted, my heart was whole again. After all we'd been through trying to conceive, I asked God a lot of questions, especially 'why.' I look back at that time now and wonder why I questioned God because this all makes perfect sense."
These days the Daniels are immersed in the daily demands of parenting. Pacifiers and pediatrician appointments are foremost on their minds, but the couple recognize that as the boys grow, other concerns will surface.
Both Sue's and Scott's families, friends and co-workers have been supportive of their decision to adopt biracial children. In the subdivision where they live, the couple can point to neighborhood children who are Chinese, Korean and African-American, and they say Zachary has made many friends at his preschool. The Daniels noted that even the response they get from strangers who see the family has been positive, with the exception of a man who pulled his child away from Zachary in a doctor's waiting room.
"It wasn't real blatant, but I wonder why he did that. Could it be because of (race)? You don't know. But you just kind of shrug it off," Scott said. "Still, we realize we're going to have extra issues that other parents don't have. Right now, everything's been really positive. I suppose when they're older, they're going to run into some negative things. As you grow up, you can't avoid them in the world.
"I was wondering about how the community would react, not for our sake so much as how Zachary or Michael would feel growing up. That's a big reason why, when we adopted Michael, we wanted to get another biracial baby, so the boys would share that common bond."
The Daniels have found ways to teach the young boys about their cultural heritage, using picture books on Africa, for example. Sue said Zachary, a friendly and talkative child, is curious about skin color, and she encourages his questions.
"The boys won't know if they're interested in their culture unless they have exposure. And I want enough exposure and opportunity for them so that they can make their own decisions," she said.
Above all, Scott is firm in his decision to focus on his children, not their color. "I want to be looked at as a family who happens to be biracial, not a biracial family," he said. "We're a family, first and foremost. We happen to have biracial children, but I don't want to be labeled because of that."
The couple regularly share the stories of Zachary's adoption with him. The Daniels met his biological mother - who was an eighth-grader when she gave birth - during the placement meeting, but she has not responded to recent letters Sue has sent her.
Michael's adoption is open, and the Daniels have tried to maintain contact with Michael's birth parents - two young adults who decided not to get married - through phone calls, letters, and even an in-person meeting on Michael's first birthday.
Letting birth parents into their lives has been an adjustment, the Daniels admitted, but they agreed it's been rewarding to extend the boys' families.
During Christmas dinner last year, Scott commented to a visiting aunt how blessed he and his wife felt to have Zachary and Michael. "She said, 'Those boys are blessed to have you, too.' I thought about it and realized she's right. We're all lucky."
Within the last few years, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has faced a growing problem: an influx of African-American and biracial infants into the agency's open adoption program and few prospective parents eager to adopt them.
It's a situation that's left adoption staff scrambling to find permanent homes for babies of color.
During 1998, Catholic Charities, which includes the 10 counties of the archdiocese, handled 14 agency adoptions. The agency helped facilitate, in differing degrees of service, 69 placements of various kinds, including stepparent, inter-agency and independent adoptions, according to Joanna Genovese-Cairns, an adoption specialist at the agency's Racine office.
About half of the birth parents Jennifer Burns sees are African-American. Burns, a pregnancy counselor at Catholic Charities' Racine office, said the rise counters a long-term trend of informal adoptions among African-Americans.
"The African-American community has kind of always practiced adoption outside the legal system," she said. "It's traditional that if a woman has a child she can't care for, another family member or friend of the family would take that child in. It wouldn't be formalized with guardianships and legal documents or adoption, but they could potentially be caring for that child for months or even years."
Reasons for the change are varied. Government programs, such as W-2, the state's welfare reform program, and an improved economy that's providing jobs for more people have restricted the number of unemployed family members available to handle free or low-cost child care arrangements, Burns said.
In some cases, birth parents can't financially handle raising a child and turn to adoption in the hope their child will thrive in better circumstances. They may already have one child and can't support another, or may be teen-agers with no family support.
"Maybe the family didn't approve of the relationship to begin with, and there can be a real lack of support for a young woman, especially if she's white and the baby is half-black," Burns said. "One of the ways families show their disapproval is to pull back and not offer that assistance when it's needed." The agency also sees women of all races who have been victims of sexual assault that resulted in pregnancy, she said.
The number of total birth parents Catholic Charities works with is difficult to estimate, since not every birth parent who comes to the agency will place a child for adoption, Genovese-Cairns said.
The rate at which birth parents arrive at the agency fluctuates, too. "Tomorrow we could get 10 phone calls," she said. "Birth parents arrive at different times. Sometimes they come in early in the pregnancy and we have several months to work with them. Other times we get calls from a hospital staff member, saying, 'We've got a woman here who wants to place her baby for adoption. She delivered two days ago and we're ready to discharge them both. Can you come and pick up the baby?'"
"We try to get minorities to adopt. That would be our preference (in cases of same culture infants)," said Marilyn Metz, child welfare supervisor at Catholic Charities' Milwaukee office. The agency does have a small pool of African-American adoptive families that it turns to, but often these families have adopted more than one child and may not be able to handle additional children at present, she noted.
In mid-January, Catholic Charities had 14 families waiting for an agency adoption and expected to add 11 more by February. But not every family is willing to accept an African-American or biracial infant.
The reasons are varied. In some cases prejudice plays a role. "We think we're in a more enlightened time, but not everybody has moved forward that quickly," said one adoption staff worker.
Other prospective adoptive families worry about reactions from family members or people within their community. Adoptive parents may feel a powerful draw to have a child that looks more like themselves, said adoption staff workers, and unquestionably, a transracial adoption offers challenges, from the innocuous glances of strangers to pointed questions from the adopted child himself.
"I think we're noticed," said Alice Legler, a Racine foster parent who has adopted two biracial sons, 13 and 10, and a 16-year-old daughter. Catholic Charities conducted the home study prior to adoption of their younger son. A year after Legler and her husband had taken the children to a local restaurant one New Year's Eve, a woman approached her and said she remembered the family being there that night.
"She said, 'I just thought your family was so neat,'" Legler said. "Nobody has ever made any big, nasty comments about our kids. If anything, the response has gone the other way. But these days, I don't think (racially-mixed children) are a minority. It's a lot easier now because they're no longer alone in class or alone in other families."
Adoption staff workers agree that parents should instill cultural heritage into a child of a different race through ways as varied as introducing him to friends from that race, or attending local cultural events. Typically, Metz refers such adoptive families to the Special Needs Adoption Network in Milwaukee (800) 762-8063, which offers a lending library of resource material, such as videos, tapes and books on transracial adoption.
In the open adoption program, birth parents and adoptive parents get to know each other and frequently can share family traditions and celebrations, Metz said.
A loving home is more essential for children than is a common culture, according to Yoron Whitfield of Milwaukee. Whitfield and his wife, Kate, are African-American and the parents of three African-American children, two of them adopted through Catholic Charities.
"If, as a child grows, he has questions about his heritage, that should be dealt with the best way a parent can," he said. "But I believe the first thing you need for adoption is the true love for the child. That's just the main concern."
Ethel M. Gintoft - Parenting staff
We pray, "Our Father, Who art in heaven." We make the sign of the cross, "In the name of the Father...." Jesus pleads on the cross, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."
As Catholics we have regularly acknowledged God the Father. But this year, 1999, is the special Year of the Father.
Our pope, John Paul II, has asked that this year of 1999, the third year of preparing for the great Jubilee Year 2000, be devoted to God the Father. The two previous years, 1997 and 1998, should have been focused, according to the pope's suggestion, on God the Son (Jesus) and on God the Holy Spirit, respectively.
The pope wrote in his apostolic letter, "On the Coming of the Millennium," that "In this year (1999) the whole church is called to set out on a great pilgrimage to the Father's house, so that the jubilee will be a great hymn of praise to the Father, who sent his Son into the world as our redeemer."
So who is the Father? What do we know about him? How should we regard him? And especially important, what perception of the Father do we cultivate in our children?
When we address God as Father, we mean that God is the source of all being. God is the beginning and the end of all life.
The Israelites knew God (Yahweh) as creator of the universe. Jesus spoke of God as his father and the father of every person. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church" pulls these two views of God the Father together: "The language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children."
God the Father is what every individual is intended for. He is the goal of life. The pope writes that he hopes this year will enable all Christians to experience more fully what it means to be adopted sons and daughters of God.
As Creator, God is the epitome of love, for he created in order to share his glory and his goodness, his beauty, his wisdom, all things positive and good. We can deduce that God must be all that's wonderful in his creation: beauty, intelligence, truth, wisdom, but more perfectly so.
But wait. We speak here of God as Father, evoking a male image. It is inaccurate to stop there. The Catechism points out that God is both Father and Mother. "In no way is God in man's image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes."
The Catechism explains further, "God's parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood which emphasizes God's immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature."
In his Jan. 20 general audience, the pope noted that certain Old Testament passages refer to God's love as that of a mother He cited Isaiah as an example: "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you."
What do we know about this Creator, this Father and Mother? First, it is difficult with our finite minds to comprehend an infinite being. The best we seem to be able to do is think of a human fatherly person we know. In his Jan. 13 general audience, the pope said it is natural for a human creature to grope for human terms to describe the Creator.
Old Testament writers, the pope pointed out, describe God as a father whose love is more constant and reliable than that of any earthly father.
The God of Scripture is an infinite being, all-knowing, omnipresent, caring. He intervenes in history by creating Adam and Eve in his own image, sets up moral standards for them, saves Noah, makes a covenant with Abram, frees Israel from slavery, gives Israel his law, enters the world in the person of his Son.
The mission and purpose of Jesus tell us a great deal. God the Father so loves us that he sent his only Son to live our human life, endure rejection and even death, all in order to redeem us.
The way Jesus regarded God demonstrates to us how intimate and tender the Father can be. In the olive garden, when Jesus was facing rejection, arrest and death, he addressed God as "Abba." This is an Aramaic term used by children, similar to "Daddy" or "Pop," to express intimacy between parent and child.
Jesus tells us that God is "the one Lord" whom you must love "with all your strength." Jesus shows us that God's love, even more than a parent's, is unconditional, unlimited, and forgiving. At the end of his life, Jesus asks the Father to forgive his crucifiers, "for they know not what they do."
But probably the best picture of God and his unconditional love, generous forgiveness, and unlimited tenderness is Jesus' parable about the Prodigal Son. We can relate to this story because it speaks of a human parent and human son.
A man has two sons. The younger asks for his inheritance. The father divides his property between the two. The younger son foolishly wastes his inheritance in a life of dissipation. Finding himself broke, he comes to his senses and prepares to return to his father to ask for forgiveness. While he is still a long way off, the father catches sight of him. Overjoyed, he runs to him, embraces him, and orders a big feast to celebrate his son's return.
An article in the U.S. bishops' "Preparing for the Jubilee: Year Three, 1999" notes, "We call it the parable of the Prodigal Son but it is better named the parable of the forgiving Father ... who daily waits patiently for his son's return, runs out to welcome him back, forgives him even before the son can express his sorrow....
"The other son, who served his father so faithfully, finds it hard to believe that his father is so unabashedly, unconditionally loving.... No matter what we do, no matter what happens to us, God had nothing but love for us - like a good father or mother."
Jesus told this touching story to teach his disciples and us about the Father's love and mercy. He gave us a model of how we must treat one another.
Unfortunately the human image of "father" may not always work for those who have had bad experience of their earthly fathers (or mothers). Because the human beings that are our parents are fallible, they can make mistakes.
So, though for the most part, parents are the primary representations of what God is like, for some the father-image does not represent the nurturing, caring reality of God the Father.
But Fr. William Kohler, former campus minister at Cardinal Stritch University and currently associate vicar for clergy for Milwaukee Archdiocese, noted in a discussion, "When there is no proper parent or no parent at all (as in the case of orphans), there is always someone in the child's life who takes on a parental image." It can be an uncle, grandparent, neighbor, or teacher, who is loving and tender.
"It can also be a group, like a parish community, that is loving and caring," Kohler said.
How should we respond to God in this year of preparation for the Jubilee Year 2000? We must:
(Sources used for the above article include "Catechism of the Catholic Church"; "Tertio Millennio Aveniente," by Pope John Paul II; "Preparing for the Jubilee: Year Three, 1999," from the United States Catholic Conference; and various Catholic dictionaries.
James Pankratz - Special to Parenting
Just before Christmas a member of our family died. He was widely known for his eccentric habits - bathing in a pool of light under a window, plastering himself against the register during winter to absorb the warm air, sleeping on a small rug in the basement and scurrying outside whenever the back door was left open a crack.
Despite these strange habits, I can't recall anyone ever speaking ill of him. In fact, he was regarded with only affection by the rest of the family. Darwin the cat died on Dec. 20.
Darwin was with us from almost the beginning. A year-and-a-half after our wedding, my wife brought home the gray and black kitten. He was named after Charles Darwin following a PBS special on his famous voyages. He had a patch of white under his chin, like a small bib, and sported a beautiful black and white ringed tail.
My wife picked him from the litter because he was small and feisty. Sometimes in his younger days he was a kamikaze pilot leaping from a mantle or chair to surprise and delight his human companions. He had an infallible detector for knowing when one of us settled into an easy chair.
Ten minutes later he would be curled up in a lap. When the children were born, he checked out these interlopers. He decided they could stay and made friends with them, too. Often he welcomed me home from work by rolling on the floor asking me to stroke his soft fur. He would have turned 19 years old in January. We miss him.
If your family has a pet, you know what I'm talking about. Whether it's a tomcat, a cocker spaniel, a parrot, or a rabbit, the pet is a full-fledged member of the family. We feed it, give it a place to sleep and carry on conversations with it. Darwin had his own language. He always only said "Meow" but he said it in several different ways.
"Meow" could mean he wanted to be fed or go outside, wanted company, was startled or felt content. Psychologists tell us most communication is non-verbal. Darwin trained his family well in learning what he had to say.
A cat acts like a cat and a dog acts like a dog, but it is the unique blend of cat-like or dog-like behaviors that creates a specific personality. That personality finds its way into our human hearts. When a family pet dies, it is often a child's first real direct experience with death. It is a loss for all the family. And a loss means feelings of grief, feelings of sadness.
How can a family cope with the loss of a pet? First of all, avoid the mistake of telling your son or daughter to simply get over the sadness because "after all, it was just a cat." True, it was a cat. But it was not just a cat. The specific personality of the cat elicits our feelings of attachment to it.
The degree of sadness we feel is not really related to the objective value of the animal, e.g. how pretty, smart, agile or healthy it is. Rather the depth of our sadness is determined by how attached we felt to our pet. Each family member knows that for himself or herself. That's why no one can tell others how sad they should feel or when they should stop grieving.
The first thing to do is to take seriously your child's feelings of loss. The best way to let your children know that you accept how they feel is perhaps the simplest. Ask them to talk about what the pet meant to them. Allow them to express their feelings of loss. How do you do that?
On the evening of our cat's death, our younger son suggested that we get out the family photo albums. We turned off the TV and began paging through the albums. We laughed and cried over the pictures of Darwin sunbathing or running across the fireplace mantle. Of course, as we looked at the photos, we saw ourselves growing as a family. We remembered our history together. It brought back memories to share and questions to ask. A family pet is a link both to the rest of the family and to happy memories.
Next, we planned the final goodbye. I told the family the story of the death of my calico cat, Felix, when I was the same age as my younger son. The neighborhood kids and I planned an elaborate funeral. I designed a grave marker on a wooden board from my father's workbench. A hole was dug in the backyard. As I pulled my red wagon, the makeshift hearse, across the yard, my friend, Rich, played taps on his trumpet.
The ceremony we designed for Darwin was simpler. We all helped to wrap him in a nice, warm blanket. After covering him with fresh soil, we joined hands. Now we were momentarily stumped. There were definite theological problems associated with praying for the repose of his cat-soul or for the forgiveness of sins.
Not only did Darwin never commit a sin, he never even killed a bird or a mouse. As a matter of fact, he cowered in terror once when a mouse zoomed across the kitchen floor. Darwin definitely held to the principle of non-violence. So we recounted some of his accomplishments and then thanked him for the joy he had given us.
During the next week something unexpected happened. My wife had e-mailed some of our friends about the death of the cat. She sent them a clever obituary listing his many surnames, his history and the fact that the backwoods have been renamed in his honor. Our friends sent back their condolences and tributes.
One wrote, "I look forward to visiting Darwin's Woods (no admission, I presume, no postcards) when next in town." Another friend from California sent a card with drawings of two cats with angel wings on the front. Inside she wrote, "I even have pictures of him in my photo album, so I know how special he was. Darwin had a loving family ... and lived a full life plus! He was lucky indeed."
The most memorable tribute was e-mailed to us by my wife's brother. He wrote, "It is with deep regret and much sadness that we learn of the demise of Darwin the wondercat. He was a good cat, a noble cat.... We can only hope that a young kitten in cat land will pick up the gauntlet. As his torch is passed, always remember these lasting words 'Ask not what your cat can do for you, ask what you can do to further felines in this country.'" OK, with apologies to former President John F. Kennedy, I admit it's a little over the top. But it did sum up our feelings purr-fectly.
(Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist in Catholic Charities' Milwaukee regional office.)
Patricia Lorenz Special to Parenting
My friend Diane insisted I read a book she received for Christmas, "Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom, the true, simple story of an old professor and a student he taught 20 years earlier. It's about the life lessons Morrie shares with Mitch during the time Morrie is dying of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.
Because this book touched my soul, made me laugh and cry, and made me think life-changing thoughts, I'm recommending you read it also. I took notes on scraps of paper while devouring this short book's 192 pages.
"Tuesdays With Morrie" helped me understand my own mother's death in 1979, also caused by ALS. Through Mitch's eyes, I saw how Morrie and my mother died and what their last days were like physically. More importantly, I learned the wisdom about life that flitted through their minds during the process. I now understand the scribbled notes my mother gave me during those months before she died.
I was startled when I saw the title of this book, "Tuesdays With Morrie," because it reminded me of a story I wrote in 1985 titled "Tuesday Afternoons With Lucy."
In that piece, I shared with Guideposts Magazine's 16 million readers how frustrated I was when my mother grew weaker with ALS. Her mind was still intact but she had lost her ability to communicate with her friends. They all wanted to be with her and help do things for her but it tired her out so much to see them that I came up with a plan, "Tuesday Afternoons With Lucy."
I sent written invitations to 30 of her closest friends and invited them to her home every Tuesday afternoon to say the rosary. As soon as they arrived we'd wheel Mom into the living room in her wheelchair, say the rosary and then they'd file past her chair, give her a quick hug, say a few words and leave.
The entire event took less than 45 minutes or an hour. But every Tuesday during the summer before she died my mother looked forward to those moments of prayer and to the love and hugs that were showered upon her by her friends. It taught me about how we are supposed to die - with prayer and conversation and hugs as often as possible from those we love.
In Mitch Albom's book "Tuesdays With Morrie" the same thing happens. Morrie wants his friends and family around him as often as possible as he goes through the dying process. But the book is much more. It's lessons. Lessons that I wasn't mature enough at age 34, when my mother was dying, to understand or to even acknowledge.
Things like why we can't or shouldn't trade our dreams for a bigger paycheck. Things like our need for physical affection getting greater as we get older. Things like Morrie's thoughts when we wonder, at the end of our lives, if we should have done things differently.
Morrie says, "We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, 'Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?' You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won't just happen automatically."
Morrie talks about why we should look forward to growing old. "The young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don't know what's going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy - and you believe them! It's such nonsense. As you grow, you learn more."
Morrie explains that people who wish they were younger again are simply reflecting unsatisfied, unfulfilled lives that haven't found meaning. He says, "If you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until 65."
On their eighth Tuesday meeting Morrie talks about the value system in our country. "Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good."
Morrie explains that people who are always telling us about their new cars, new property, latest toys, are the people who are so hungry for love that they accept these things, these substitutes.
"You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."
Read "Tuesdays With Morrie." Then share it with a dozen friends. Ask your adult children to read it. And as we all grow older this year, may we learn to love getting older like Morrie did. Only then will we be truly rich and wise.
(Lorenz, a full-time writer and speaker who lives in Oak Creek, is enjoying her empty nest after 30 years of parenting her two daughters and two sons.)
Copyright, 1997 by Catholic Herald, Milwaukee, WI
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