The Gift of Diverse Families

A Worship Service by Sundra Flansburg

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday July 24, 2005

This morning, I want to share some thoughts with you on family, and especially around my experience with adoption. These include some personal reflections on my own situation, and a little about connects and disconnects with some of the social policy currently discussed these days.

I chose to share my Single Mom’s adoption essay with you in large part because it gives a glimpse of the role that my network of friends, my family, and particularly my parents have had in getting me to where I am now—a single mom to a wonderful adopted daughter. And I chose to talk about adoption and what that experience has brought to my life for two reasons: One is that our dear friend Jim Rice had suggested to me several times that I talk in Forum about adoption—so I dedicate this to him. I don’t think that he would have talked about adoption in quite the same way that I have chosen to, but that was the wonderful thing about Jim. I’m pretty sure he asked me because he knew I would take a different perspective.

Second, adoption has made me really think differently about what a family is. When I was growing up, if someone would have asked me what a family was, I would have known right away: a mom, a dad, and some biological kids. When I reached the point of deciding to adopt as a single person, though, I really began to think differently about what makes a family. Is a single parent (especially single mother) family by definition disfunctional, or as they called it up until recently, “broken.” Why is sharing “blood” so important? What really defines a family?

The first of what I saw as a political issue came when I was researching which country to begin adoption plans with. As I mentioned in the earlier reading, I looked in Latin America for reasons of the heart, mostly. But of the countries that allowed international adoptions, at least those that the agency I chose had programs in, only one would allow adoption by single persons. I wasn’t surprised by that really, since many of the governments in Latin America are heavily influenced by the Catholic church, an institution not known for progressive thinking on family issues. Though I disagree strongly with that church on most of their social policy issues, I had, and still have, mixed feelings about opposing those policies as a foreigner, especially when I was asking for the privilege of adopting one of their children. Rather than explore those issues now, suffice it to say that I was thankful that there was one country that didn’t just automatically exclude me from consideration. But the fact that there were policies in many countries against my forming a family through adoption made me reflect on my motivations, and whether I truly believed in my core that I would be not only a good mother, but also be able to create a family environment that would be the in the best interests of a child entrusted to me. It somehow seems that we who adopt have a special responsibility in that sense.

Those kinds of thoughts led me to think a lot about what it would mean to adopt as a single mom. I started thinking about that, actually, early on, when I was still in Costa Rica, a fairly socially advanced country but one that still has a strong Catholic influence. The friends I had through the master’s program I was doing in women’s studies were uniformly and enthusiastically supportive of the idea, though many of their husbands were less so. But if there is anything I’ve learned in life it is that it is important to choose good people to surround yourself with. They may or may not agree with you, but they should support you in acting on your values and encourage you to make the decisions that will make you a better person. Later, when I was actively pursuing adoption while living in the Boston area, I was very lucky to connect with a wonderful organization called Single Mothers by Choice. Candidly, I haven’t really found support groups hugely engaging during my own personal struggles, but I did very much appreciate the friendships and networks I found in this organization. If only the chance to get out and socialize with other human beings who had babies to attend to and small children tugging on their arms. And I will tell you, it is an amazing thing to see 150 single women of every race and ethnicity, with 1 or 2 or 3 children each, descending on a picnic site! Those meetings were for me unique in their feeling of security and community in numbers.

I also began to lean more and more on my own mother and father I’m afraid, and truly appreciate them as they did more than anyone could ever have expected them to do in helping me with that life changing project. I honestly don’t know where I would be now, really, if they had not been so involved and supportive at every step.

As I progressed through the adoption process, picked up Catalina, and made all of the adjustments that starting a family implies, I also became more aware of the many, many ways that people form families, and the ways that that diversity enriches a community. One of my early pleasures, when Catalina was a baby and still waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 every morning, was to walk down to my neighborhood café at the crack of dawn. There, I could sip on dark, rich coffee and nibble on the freshly made cinnamon swirls while Catalina played with Cheerios, or later, played with other babies in the play corner. I got to know a whole group of people. The kind and generous father of Grace, who always gave his wife a break on Sunday mornings and hung out at the café with their baby girl—and who came over to my apartment and secured my bookcases to the wall when Catalina started climbing. Tabitha, the smart and organized single mom, who had Fiona using a sperm bank. Elle’s mother, who birthed her daughter with the help of an acquaintance, who also ended up maintaining contact with them. Tracy and Alex, she African American and he Caucasian, who decided to create a truly multiracial family by adopting their daughter from Guatemala. The Christian right might disapprove of the majority of those families, but our community was much the better for them. They used and maintained our parks, organized the multicultural Halloween party, visited the library, shopped in the town center, and generally brought different priorities and perspectives to play. And they contributed hugely to creating a livable town.

I loved my community there for its diversity, much as I love this church for its diversity with regard to families. It’s what makes it possible to feel at home in a community, and to feel like I can be who I really am, rather than needing to constantly strive to prove that Catalina and I have a healthy, legitimate family. And though in my heart I am confident and sure that our family is wonderful, privileged, and secure, in a larger political environment that is set on excluding many families from the public approval and recognition that goes along with a marriage license, the support and acceptance that I get here is very important to me. I love the active, caretaking men, the two daddy families, the single (or at least apparently so), moms, and all of the other permutations, including mom and dad couples. I feel cared for and supported not just because of my personal situation, but also because this church does the same for so many different kinds of families.

What, at heart, I will never understand is why someone would fear these loving families. I do understand, though oppose, politicians and social fundamentalists who use these fears to mobilize people against others who simply seek to live in peace and nurture their children and one another. I dislike them but I see their motives—there will certainly always be people who cynically use whatever situation is at hand to promote their own importance and power.

But I don’t understand those who let themselves get whipped up into hate, or into condemning others for the way their families look, or the fact that they want a family. Though I will never understand that feeling, I’ve come to believe that at least some of it has to do with isolation and segregated communities. If you are a middle class white person with not one friend who is an African American single mom, it is probably easier to believe the myths that social fundamentalists would have you believe. If you are unaware of the gay neighbors or colleagues around you, it is probably easier to believe the myths that are perpetuated by those who promote hate. It is when we live and interact in diverse communities that we have the chance to get to know people who are different from us—born to different races and ethnicities, with more or less personal wealth, with different sexual identities, whose families teach different kinds of spiritualities. If we are thoughtful at all, it’s there that we have to examine what we’ve learned and reflect on how that does or does not really explain and help build relationships and social ties.

Indeed, if I’m not straying too far, diversity and what it gives us personally and in community is why I so appreciate the idea and the reality of public schools. When I was growing up, it was still one of the few places in our country’s social institutions where you could expect to meet, study, and play with children from families with at least some differences from yours. Though communities still fairly segregated by race and income made and still make truly diverse school populations unlikely, at least some basic exposure is there, and the opportunities to get to know others of different religions and social backgrounds. If one of the strengths of family is the intimacy based on love and care, one of the weaknesses is when that care gets turned so inward that any difference is seen as threatening and to be avoided.

Returning to the traditional definition of family, it is important to ask how a rigid conception of family benefits us—the children, adults, and larger community. Apart from the divisiveness that this perspective engenders, does this policy create for those families who fulfill its requirements more stability, a more loving environment for children? Indeed, the irony is that in areas with high concentrations of religious fundamentalists, the divorce rates are much higher there than in areas where the sinful moderates and non-church-goers live. Everyone must remember the much cited studies that found, quote “Four of the five states with the highest resident divorce rates in the country are in the Deep South, where,” says journalist Lisa Latham, “families pray together but, apparently, can’t stay together.”[1] And returning to the issue of single mothers: if 40% of unmarried mothers have incomes of less than $10,000,[2] it is almost laughable to conclude that the answer to the struggles they face is to marry them off.

The issue that indeed puts so many children at risk in this rich, developed country, is poverty. And secondly, a lack of access to basic health care. As researcher Sara McLanahan writes, “Low-income is the single most important factor in accounting for the lower-achievement of these children”—meaning children born to single parent families. Poverty and the social stresses that go along with it should be what mobilizes American citizens. Judith Stacey, another researcher, states that careful research shows that “it’s not how many parents kids have, the parents’ genders, or whether they’re married to each other that determines child well-being. Instead, factors like parental attention and nurturing, a low level of family conflict, and access to social support, education, and financial resources are what kids need to thrive.”[3] I’d expand that to say that access to social support, education, and financial resources are what all of us need to thrive.

Reflecting back on my family situation, I’ll admit to some stresses that two-parent families don’t necessarily have. Like needing to be both the main breadwinner and the main caregiver. Like never psychologically, and only occasionally logistically, getting help in the daily necessities of parenthood. There are some stresses I and Catalina face that the traditional family of mythology doesn’t have to contend with. So that is why families like mine—and even more so families that face additional daily stresses like poverty, isolation, violence, and so on—don’t need the additional stresses of feeling excluded, less accepted, or not quite-as-good.

This setting, in the First Unitarian Church, is where at this stage in my life I am finding and appreciating the support Catalina and I enjoy here. I’ve also found it in dear and diverse friends here and elsewhere, and certainly in my own extended family. Perhaps because of Catalina’s and my adoptive family, I have come to care less about what blood may or may not mean in human relationships. Indeed, I can’t imagine any more intense sense of motherhood or love than I feel for my daughter, though we have no blood ties and are racially different. Though I consider myself lucky to have two parents who I love deeply and who have supported me through more years than any parent should need to, I must admit to loving and depending on several very close friends, and a larger network of friends and even acquaintances. And, maybe, this is what the complex world of human relationships really is. What families in all shapes and sizes give us is a push to be open to new experiences and new types of relationships. To focus on the people and the spiritual core that ties us to the rest of the world’s living essense. To know, even if we cherish our way of life and history and values, that they are but one way to live in this complex and challenging world.

Let me end by saying that I can’t really define for you what makes a family a family. But I think whatever it is has a lot more to do with choosing to form an intimate, loving family group than it has to do with the right number of genders and generations. I’m thankful that here I have found an environment that allows me to continue exploring that experience with all the energy and support that that exploration requires. Thank you.