Cheri Pies death: Author of ‘pioneering’ lesbian parenting handbook dies of cancer at 73
The author of one of America’s first ever parenting books for lesbians has died of cancer at age 73.
Cheri Pies, a professor emerita of public well being at the College of California, Berkeley, broke new floor for homosexual moms when she printed Contemplating Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians in 1985.
The college announced earlier this month that Pies had died on 4 July at her dwelling in Berkeley, describing her as a trailblazer and “a nationwide chief in girls’s well being”.
“She was completely a pioneer, and people of us who got here later constructed on her work,” stated G Dorsey Inexperienced, a psychologist who co-authored 2003’s The Lesbian Parenting Guide, in line with the college.
“I might suggest her guide to purchasers. That was when lesbian {couples} have been simply beginning to consider having youngsters as out lesbians. Cheri began that dialog.”
Pies, whose first identify is pronounced “Sherry”, had labored as a well being educator for Deliberate Parenthood through the Seventies, counselling straight girls who have been contemplating having youngsters.
On the time, overtly homosexual dad and mom have been exceedingly uncommon and most US states didn’t allow homosexual {couples} to undertake, whereas homosexual marriage was half a century away.
In 1978, although, Pies’ feminine companion adopted a toddler. Pies struggled to search out any data or help for homosexual {couples} elevating youngsters, so she started holding workshops at her dwelling in Oakland, simply throughout the bridge from San Francisco.
The workshops turned wildly standard, and so within the Eighties she compiled the fabric into her pioneering guide, which gave sensible recommendation on points reminiscent of discovering a sperm donor, navigating adoption legislation and constructing a community of supportive buddies and kinfolk.
“As a result of of Cheri’s work there was a important mass of individuals saying ‘sure, we will have the household we would like’,” stated Berkeley well being professor Lori Dorfman. “There are individuals strolling the earth as a result of of Cheri Pies.”
One girl who attended Pies’ workshops, Jill Rose, stated she and her companion would have struggled to undertake with out her assist and that they think about her their youngsters’s honorary godmother.
Pies went on to earn a doctorate in well being schooling in 1993, working because the director of household and youngster well being programmes for close by Contra Costa County and later additionally changing into a lecturer at Berkeley.
She is survived by her spouse Melinda Linder and her sisters Lois Goldberg and Stacy Pies.
