Points of light: informal adoption in the black community

Children Today, Sept-Oct, 1990 by Charmaine Yoest

Her young mother had just died at age 31, from asthma, leaving six children between 1 and 12. Her father had left the year before. It was 1965 in Louisiana and the relatives had gathered in the kitchen of Grandmother McKee's house:

  "I can remember, vaguely, they
    were saying, what are we gonna
    do with the children?  And
    somebody said, put em up for
    adoption.'  But my grandmother
    said, No.  I'll raise them.' She
    didn't want to separate us.  So,
    that's the way it began, " remembers
    Nadine, the fourth child,
    only five years old then.

They called her "MaDear," (ma-dee-a) short for " Mother Dear," and she raised them all on nothing but her own and her daughter's Social Security checks. No welfare. A blind uncle and ten other grandchildren without a mother also needed her care. " She was like the post, the security. You could go there and lay your head down; we may not have had a lot of material things, but that was home. She was always there," says Nadine.

Many others in the black community share Nadine's memory of being informally adopted by a grandmother. The tradition of "taking care of our own" by taking in needy children is so prevalent in the black community that it is a distinctive part of its culture. In a study published in 1977, Robert Hill, a professor at Morgan State University, found that 13 % of black children lived in informally adoptive families (compared to only 3 % of white children). By an overwhelming majority, those children were being raised by single, elderly women like MaDear. Hill found that almost half of black families headed by women over 65 had informally adopted children. (1)

Grandma Jones (not the real family name) is another woman, who like MaDear, informally adopted her grandchildren. Her daughter gave birth as an unwed 15-year-old to Gale. Subsequently, in two-year intervals, Gale's mother had another daughter and a son. They all lived together in the Jones home even after her mother married.

Though Gale's mother was present, Grandma Jones was always the children's primary caregiver. Gale says of her mother, "It was like she was my sister." Gale distinctly remembers her mother sitting down in the kitchen one day and deliberately deciding that Gale would belong to her grandparents, while the other two children would remain hers. "My mother informally gave me to my grandparents," says Gale.

Eventually, her mother became addicted to heroin and left. "She went off and did her own thing," remembers Gale. Later she returned and, to strike back at the Joneses for trying to get her off heroin, took the children away. She soon returned Gale, but kept the other two with her. However, when the Joneses found out that the two younger children didn't see their mother for days at a time, Grandma Jones went to court and won guardianship of them as well.

Gale's mother was the third generation of women in her family to have become an unwed pregnant teenager. Single parenthood can be the event which effectively extinguishes the light of hope in a young girl's life, introducing her to a dark world of struggle and hardship. In our society today, unwed teenage pregnancy has become an agent of darkness, perpetuating poverty through the generations. For the child of a single parent, the statistical odds of becoming an unwed mother, or fathering a child out-of-wedlock, are staggering. One study found that 80 % of the girls who were mothers at 15 were themselves daughters of teenage mothers? (2)

Gale and Nadine are exceptional in having broken out of this vicious cycle. Gale is now studying for her Ph.D. at a northern university and Nadine graduated from college and now works in Washington, D.C. Gale's younger sister, however, did become pregnant out-of-wedlock, carrying the cycle into the fourth generation.

Unwed pregnancy is far from just "a black problem." Regardless of race or class, unwed pregnancy coupled with single parenthood is intrinsically and inescapably difficult in its emotional demands, and usually leads to poverty. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 65.7 % of all children under age 6 in female-headed families lived in poverty in 1986; in female-headed black families the proportion was 71.9 %.

The number of white, unwed pregnant teenagers is far greater than the number in the black community, but proportionally the black community is hit harder by unwed pregnancy and its effects. Today, 61.2 % of all black children are born to unwed mothers. (3) According to Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children's Defense Fund, a black teenager is twice as likely to become pregnant as a white teenager and five times as likely to become an unwed parent.

Despite this high level of unwed pregnancy, the black community has a very low percentage of girls choosing formal adoption for their babies. In fact, the percentage is statistically insignificant at less than 1%.

As a result, there is a common perception that the black community is not interested in adoption. Because there is such a low relinquishment rate, it is assumed that unwed black mothers will not consider adoption. And with black children comprising the largest percentage of the children waiting to be adopted, it is also assumed that black families will not formally adopt.