Dr. Cheri A. Pies, whose 1985 book, Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians, helped innumerable queer women become parents during the “gayby boom” of the 1980s, died from cancer on July 4 at the age of 73. If you don’t know her name yet, you should; in many ways, all of us queer parents who came after have benefited from her work, whether we know it or not.
A Pioneering Book
Pies, who got her doctorate in public health education in 1993 from the University of California-Berkeley, spent the bulk of her career as a clinical professor at that university’s School of Public Health (BPH), where her research “examined the social determinants of health and proposed ways of addressing the social and economic inequities that influence birth outcomes and generational health,” according to her obituary from the school. A popular teacher, she also published dozens of papers and was nationally recognized many times for her contributions to public health.
Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians, which Pies had published through the lesbian feminist press Spinsters Ink in 1985 (and updated in 1988), evolved from two influences: Pies’ work in the 1970s as a health educator for Planned Parenthood, where she was running workshops for straight women contemplating motherhood, and her own experience becoming an adoptive parent in 1978 with her then-partner. With little guidance, and few other lesbian parents to turn to for support, Pies realized that she and other lesbians considering motherhood could benefit from group workshops, too, she explained in the book’s introduction. She held the first one in her living room in the fall of 1978 and 25 women attended, attracted by fliers put up in the nearby women’s bookstore and other local congregation points for queer women.
Considering Parenthood offered information not only on how to start a family, but on critical related topics like making the decision to parent in the first place; building a support network; interacting with one’s family of origin; work and money issues; maintaining a healthy relationship with one’s partner; being a nonbiological mother; single parenting; disabled lesbians considering parenthood; considering another child, and choosing not to parent. With practical tips, numerous questions to ask oneself and/or one’s partner, and plenty of quotes drawn from the hundreds of lesbians Pies had worked with, much of the book feels startlingly relevant today, even though some of the terminology is dated and many of the legal details have changed. Today’s crop of books on queer parenthood stand on Pies’ shoulders.
“She was absolutely a pioneer, and those of us who came later built on her work,” psychologist G. Dorsey Green said in Pies’ obituary. Green, co-author of the slightly later The Lesbian Parenting Book (1995; updated 2003), noted, ”I would recommend her book to clients. That was when lesbian couples were just starting to think about having children as out lesbians. Cheri started that conversation.”
“Because of Cheri’s work there was a critical mass of people saying ‘Yes, we can have the family we want.'”
Lori Dorfman, adjunct professor of health and social behavior, Berkeley Public Health
“Because of Cheri’s work there was a critical mass of people saying ‘Yes, we can have the family we want.’ There are people walking the earth because of Cheri Pies,” added Lori Dorfman, an adjunct professor of health and social behavior and Pies’ colleague at BPH.
Jill Rose, who attended Pies’ workshops in the 1980s, told BPH that she considers Pies the “honorary godmother” of her son and two grandchildren, because Pies’ workshops helped her and her partner find a sperm donor. “Her group gave us the structure, and knowledge about what steps to take. We didn’t know many people at that point who were doing it, so it was really important to find somebody we could ask questions of,” Rose explained.
A Career Crowned by Mentorship
One of Pies’ other key achievements was overseeing the launch and early years of the Best Babies Zone Initiative, a program to reduce infant mortality by fostering collaboration across community sectors, including economic development, health care, education, and child care. For this and her other public health work, she received the 2018 Maternal and Child Health Bureau Director’s Award from the Health Resources and Services Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It was mentoring, however, that was her real joy. In an interview this past spring on the BPH website, she called it “the pièce de résistance of being a professional,” adding, “I love mentoring my former students, friends, and young people in my life.”
Cheri Pies is survived by her wife, Melina Linder; sisters Lois Goldberg and Stacy Pies; and, her obituary notes, “a legion of honorary children and grandchildren in families with lesbian and gay parents who were conceived because of her work.”
I’d add that even those of us queer parents who didn’t benefit from her directly owe her a debt of gratitude. Was she the only person or even the first to offer advice for lesbian prospective parents? No—and there were other notable efforts in the mid-1980s, like Choosing Children, a documentary by Debra Chasnoff and Kim Klausner (whom Pies thanks in the acknowledgments to Considering Parenthood). But Pies’ thorough, practical guide was a resource like no other at the time, helping queer people evaluate if parenthood was right for them, learn how to get there if it was, and create environments in which their families could thrive.
As Pies wrote in her introduction, “But let us not forget that there have always been lesbian mothers…. These women paved a path down which others of us are now walking, blazing new trails of our own with few role models and many difficult turns.” We are also walking in their—and her—footsteps.
Cheri Pies also did some hilarious stand up comedy back in the day. RIP Cheri.
I didn’t know that–thanks for sharing!