Remembering Cheri Pies, the woman who revolutionized lesbian parenting

On July 4, queer parenting trailblazer Cheri Pies passed away from cancer at the age of 73. Pies is revered for her 1985 book Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians, which she created while leading workshops at Planned Parenthood for heterosexual mothers-to-be. After her female partner adopted a child, Pies realized how few resources existed to guide lesbian parents. So she set out to change that.

“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 at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, told Berkeleyside.

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G. Dorsey Green, who co-authored The Lesbian Parenting Book in 2003, called Pies “absolutely a pioneer.”

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“Those of us who came later built on her work,” Green said. “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.”

Before publishing her book, Pies had been running workshops for lesbian parents out of her Oakland, California home. As she became more widely known, gay women across the country began reaching out to her for help. That sparked her to turn her expertise into a book.

Jill Rose attended those workshops in the 1980s and said it helped her and her partner find their sperm donor. She now has a son and two grandchildren and said she thinks of Pies as a type of symbolic godmother to them.

“My partner and I wanted to have a child, and were trying to figure out how to go about it,” Rose said. “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.”

Pies is also known for co-creating and ultimately leading the Best Babies Zone Initiative while working as a clinical professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. The New York Times described the program as a “groundbreaking” initiative to study and improve health conditions in struggling neighborhoods. Still running today, it focuses on areas with high rates of sudden infant death syndrome and low birth weights.

“If babies aren’t born healthy, you know that something isn’t right in the community,” Pies once said in a speech.

But above all else, she will most be remembered for the babies that came into this world because of the work she did. Many credit her for helping launch the 1980s “gayby boom.”

Her wife, Melina Linder, told the New York Times that no matter where Pies was, she was recognized and thanked.

“Cheri and I could be anywhere in the world — on a hike in New Zealand or just walking in the Berkeley Hills — and people would see her and stop to thank her, saying how Ben or Alice or whoever would not be in their life were it not for Cheri,” Linder said.

As Professor Dorfman of Berkeley put it, “There are people walking the earth because of Cheri Pies.”