Book Briefs: March 18, 1988

When Black Kids Get White Parents

Transracial Adoptees and Their Families: A Study of Identity and Commitment, by Rita J. Simon and Howard Alstein (Praeger, 163 pp.; $29.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Mary Ann Kuharski, a free-lance writer and homemaker in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kuharski is the mother of 12 children, 6 of whom are adopted and of mixed races with “special needs.”

Transracial Adoptees and Their Families: A Study of Identity and Commitment may do much to discard the decades-old prejudices that still persist against interracial adoption. It will certainly encourage and support those living in such multiracial families.

The Simon-Alstein report refutes the myths still being used in adoption practices by some caseworkers and agencies. They believe that transracial adoption is “unnatural” and therefore “bound to be unsuccessful.” One would expect such positions from the Ku Klux Klan, but shockingly and quite unfortunately, the most vocal objections have come from the National Black Social Workers. Since 1972, the NBSW has demanded a boycott of all such “un-matched” adoptions. Unfortunately, this has diminished the only opportunity for permanence for thousands of Indian, black, and Hispanic youngsters.

Simon and Alstein began their research in 1972, by conducting extensive interviews with 206 families who lived in five midwestern cities. (The Midwest has the heaviest concentration in the country of couples who adopt across racial lines.) Seven years later (1979) and again in 1983 and 1984, the same families were contacted again for follow-up. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that at the time of the recontact, most of the 218 children involved were adolescents or young adults, an age period when such interviews (without parents present) could have elicited all sorts of negative opinions.

And yet, to their surprise, Simon and Alstein found that 90 to 98 percent “enjoy family life,” are well adjusted, have a strong sense of racial pride, and demonstrate a healthy self-esteem.

No Racial Barriers

The minority boys and girls all scored high in their concept of having “special qualities, a sense of belonging, and family comfort level.”

In fact, say the authors, the transracial adoptees were “no more likely to wish they belonged to another race than were their white siblings.” According to Simon and Alstein, “the most consistent finding emerging from the latest survey is the sense of belonging felt by the ‘TRAS’ to their adopted families—the mothers and fathers are their parents and the brothers and sisters, their siblings; they are not viewed as substitutes or proxies for ‘real’ parents or ‘real’ family.”

More than 70 percent of the families involved in the study were Christian; over half of them said they went to church at least once a week. Obviously, to thousands of Christian families Saint Paul’s words, which remind us that through the Spirit of God we are all children of God with no racial or cultural barrier (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 3:26–28; Eph. 1:12–19), have special and very real meaning.

The portrait that emerges, say Simon and Alstein, is “a positive, warm, integrated picture that shows parents and children who feel good about themselves and about their relationships with each other.”

No one should dispute the notion that a minority youngster’s sense of identity, heritage, and culture is most ably preserved by parents of the same background. Where that is not possible, however, it seems a blatant injustice to deny such “adoptable children” the stability, permanence, sense of family ties, and—most of all—the love that can come only with a “forever family” through adoption. Children who are placed in orphanages, or those shifted from foster home to foster home, are denied all of these things.

The thorough research conducted by Simon and Alstein has reinforced what many of us know from experience: Bringing together ordinary people of varying races can truly be one of the most blessed events in a family’s existence.

Highlighted

Mice In The Cookie Jar

Evangelist Billy Graham has recently written what he considers his most important book to date: Facing Death—and the Life After (Word Books). In the following excerpt, he discusses Christian unity in the life to come.

“In heaven there will be no sectarian worship, no denominational differences, no church creeds. There will be no temple worship, for God and His Son, Jesus Christ, will be the centers of worship (Revelation 21:22). I was brought up as a Presbyterian later became a Baptist. But in later years I have felt that I belong to all churches.

Ruth has remained a strong Presbyterian, but deep in her heart she, too, belongs to all the other churches. We have never had major differences in our theology despite these backgrounds, but many people do get into heated arguments about denominational doctrines.

God did not invent denominations, man did. When we go to His home, He will invite us in, but will not ask us for our church or Sunday school credentials.

Only one question will be asked:

‘What did you do on earth with My Son, Jesus?’ It will make no difference whether we were Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile.

What matters is whether we believe in Him or reject Him. Attending a particular church does not guarantee anyone admission to heaven. Corrie ten Boom used to say, ‘A mouse in a cookie jar isn’t a cookie.’

Women And Children First?

Mothers and Divorce: Legal, Economic, and Social Dilemmas, by Terry Arendell (University of California Press, 320 pp.; $22.50, hardcover); Women and Children Last: The Plight of Poor Women in Affluent America, by Ruth Sidel (Penguin, 236 pp.; $9.95, paper); and For Crying Out Loud: Women and Poverty in the United States, edited by Rochelle Lefkowitz and Ann Withorn (Pilgrim Press, 397 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Ruth A. Tucker, a visiting professor of missions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

“In one of the richest societies on earth, the daily reality for millions of women—young and old, black and white, divorced, never married, and widowed—is the struggle to secure the barest necessities,” claims the publisher of a recent book on women and poverty.

The publisher does not exaggerate. And the massive problem of the “feminization of poverty” is multiplied many times over by the millions of children who are directly affected by their mothers’ poverty. It is a growing problem that the Christian community dare not ignore. Help in understanding this issue in American culture is available from three recent books.

In Mothers and Divorce, Terry Arendell powerfully challenges the misconception that women and men suffer equally the ill effects of divorce. Arendell investigated the lives of 60 divorced women. She shows that, contrary to popular assumption, the greatest stress associated with divorce is not the psychological effects of adjusting to singleness, but rather economic misfortune. And that problem confronts women many times more frequently than it does men. Arendell cites a 1981 study indicating that after a divorce, women suffer a 73 percent decline in their former living standard, while men enjoy a 42 percent gain.

The most heart-rending aspect of Arendell’s findings relates to the law and its regard for motherhood. The once praised no-fault divorce laws have been devastating to many women. A man can leave his low-salaried or homemaker wife for another woman without having to face the economic consequences of his actions. He generally has sufficient skills, salary, and job security to maintain economic stability, while she is economically vulnerable.

As Arendell writes, “Society’s promise to honor the role of motherhood proved hollow in divorce; the law, which at least theoretically represents society’s values, did not recognize these women’s contributions to family life and gave them no protection for carrying on their mothering activities. It simply left them alone, to cope individually with increased responsibilities.”

Still Waiting For Lifeboats

Women and Children Last opens with a description of the terrifying final minutes on the Titanic—the title is a play on the chivalrous custom of “women and children first.” Women and children were first on the lifeboats on that fateful night, but as Ruth Sidel points out, they were the first and second-class women and children. More than half of the women and children in the third-class steerage section died—some “forcibly kept down below by seamen standing guard.”

Like the poorer women and children on the affluent Titanic, poor women and children are last today in affluent America. “Statistics indicate that the fastest growing population living in poverty today is made up of women and children,” Ruth Sidel notes. Many of these women have been victimized by divorce, domestic violence, and discrimination in the job market. Yet, according to Sidel, there is little sympathy for their plight: “The most serious result of the Reagan administration’s economic policies, particularly the cutbacks in human services, has been the legitimization of the negative attitudes held by many Americans toward the poor.”

The book weaves case studies, current statistics, and history together in telling the story of the feminization of poverty, focusing on such issues as employment, welfare, and day care from both a historical and contemporary perspective. The final chapter is a call for more government action to curtail poverty among women and children.

The Right Of Public Dependence

For those wishing to delve even more deeply into the even impoverished, subject of women and poverty, For Crying Out Loud offers valuable insights from experts in various fields. The editors have sought to show that the problem is complex, and that it does not help simply to sum up the situation with the catch phrase “feminization of poverty.” The book will find critics on virtually every issue it presents, not the least of which is its perspective on welfare.

In the introduction, the editors write, “A major argument contained within this book, then, is that ‘public dependence’ is a right for all citizens and should be treated as such, not as a punitive ‘last resort’ for those poor souls who have failed at ‘independence.’ Many women at all stages of life do, and should, make rational choices to enter the welfare system.”

An important chapter, entitled “Toward the Feminization of Policy,” begins with a statement of fact that illustrates the crying need for changes that will alleviate the worldwide problem of women and poverty: “Throughout history, women have done most of the world’s caregiving work, but this work has rarely entitled them to control over resources in their own right.… The failure to regard care of humans as work has created the ancient trap of poverty for the female householder.”

The Old and New Testaments repeatedly and compassionately address issues related to women, children, and poverty, and the church today must come to terms with the implications of that message in modern society. These books are a helpful start.

The Road Most Sought

The Road to Wholeness, by Laura A. Mathis (Tyndale House, 253 pp.; $6.95, paper). Reviewed by John E. Roe, psychologist in private practice, Scotts Valley, California, and past-president, Christian Association for Psychological Studies, Western Region.

The theoretical underpinnings of The Road to Wholeness set it apart from other books that appear to be as practical yet lack its substance. Dr. Laura Mathis has given us the best of psychological theory in a highly readable style.

Responsibly, the book is not presented as a substitute for professional treatment. Throughout, the benefits of treatment are illustrated in Mathis’s rich and varied case references. And criteria for deciding when professional treatment is needed are suggested to the reader.

In the book’s opening chapter, Mathis uses the notion of “critical tapes” to identify the evaluations of self and others by which we experience our “belongingness, worthiness, and competence.” Critical tapes consist of negative messages, played by ourselves to ourselves, that sabotage self-esteem. As Mathis develops the rationale for low self-esteem, she simultaneously offers preventative help to parents so their children will develop fewer critical tapes.

Mathis is also concerned with forgiving the critical people who helped us write our critical tapes. The book here would have been enhanced by an elaboration of just how one can forgive those critical people who are unrepentant.

Mathis continues with a discussion of the difficulties arising from the failure to develop wholeness. She deals with depression, both as a normal and abnormal condition; guilt; and the healthy management of anger. The book concludes by distinguishing between false notions of self-love and those that lead to wholeness, as well as worship of the Creator of all self.

The depth and scope of this fine book are somewhat obscured by its glib chapter titles, which might lend the impression that this is “just another self-help book.” But it definitely is not. Mathis draws on all of her disciplines—Christian education, theology, and professional psychology—with creativity and thoroughness, and still communicates to the average reader. At times her explanations are so rich they must be read and reread, especially in those chapters that give a theological basis for the foundations of self-esteem.

Mathis states she hopes to “bring healing, freedom, wholeness and joy to the reader.” The Road to Wholeness will do just that for many.

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