Fighting for Her Daughter What Makes a Family is a smart insightful TV movie that starts an inquiry into the complex world facing gay adoptions by John W. Stiles

Just when you thought you’d heard the last of Florida for a while, along comes What Makes a Family, the true story of a lesbian who must fight the laws of Florida and her deceased partner’s parents for custody of their child. Brooke Shields and Cherry Jones star as lesbian couple Janine Nielssen and Sandy Cataldi. Sandy was their daughter’s birth mother; when she succumbs to systemic lupus, her parents (played by Anne Meara and Al Waxman) file for custody. Florida law views bloodlines as preeminent in custody cases and specifically precludes gays and lesbians from adopting. Janine goes to court to adopt the child. It looks like a lost cause until lawyer Terry Harrison (Whoopi Goldberg) weighs in because she "likes a good fight." Seen as a battle over the archaic laws of two of our odder states, this is a sucker punch of a movie. When 48 of 50 states (Utah recently passed an antigay and lesbian adoption bill) are silent on the issue of gay and lesbian adoption, it’s easy to make the case that something is wrong in the state of Florida. After the presidential election debacle, who could argue? The real truth about gay and lesbian adoptions is far more complicated and far less easily resolved than what we see in What Makes a Family.

The truth about adoption of any sort is not pretty. Adoption statistics quickly move from sad to tragic. Every six months, 150,000 children enter the foster care program, while 130,000 leave it–meaning that every six months, an additional 20,000 children are added to the numbers in foster care. There are currently more than half a million children in foster care in the U.S. Of that half million, a little more than 100,000 are eligible for adoption. The balance are still moving through the states’ legal systems in various stages of resolution. Terminating parental rights can be difficult even when the most heinous abuse is evidenced. Less than half of the 100,000 eligible will be adopted in 2001. The reason: There are not enough "qualified" adoptive parents. As a result, most of the children will leave the foster care system when they reach adulthood, many never having known a loving home of any sort. Not surprisingly, most people considering adoption never actually adopt. They run out of money or patience. This is the world of public adoption.

Private adoptions are a whole other picture. Private adoptions are for those with money. The children moved through private adoptions are predominately white and are adopted by upper-middle-class white couples. The children most in need are the ones least likely to be served by private programs. Carrying an unwanted child to term and giving him or her up for adoption to a loving couple is a realistic alternative for young white girls. For any other potential mother, the realistic alternatives for her child come down to an uncertain future in a foster care system or abortion.

The bottom line on any adoption, public or private, is generally drawn by the few individuals directly involved. Whether public or private, people make the decisions, not laws or policies–case workers and judges in public agency adoptions, birth mothers and private agencies in private adoptions. The principle that the "best interests of the child" should guide the decision-making process is paramount, regardless of the arena.

Unfortunately, and here’s the rub, the "best interests of the child" are defined by the individuals involved. If the individuals charged with seeing the child’s interests served believe that gays and lesbians should not be allowed to adopt, it becomes almost impossible for them to do so. If a judge is homophobic, no gay or lesbian adoptions will take place in his or her court. If a private agency (the Roman Catholic Church, for example) believes same-sex unions are wrong, no adoption. Should a public agency have an official position of nondiscrimination and yet the individuals responsible for executing the program don’t agree, the results are the same. The ignorance and prejudice of individuals become institutionalized in practice. Gay and lesbian couples, courageous enough to approach the system openly, often find themselves "offered" the children most difficult to place. Older children, emotionally disturbed children, and physically challenged children are matched to gay and lesbian couples with an attitude of "might as well, no one else will take them." The criminally cruel results are to leave tens of thousands of children languishing in foster care while depriving loving couples, and individuals, of the privilege of raising a child. In a perverse bit of irony, the assumption that gays and lesbians will not make fit parents often yields the result that the children demanding the greatest skills are placed with the very people these ignorant souls claim have the least skills.

What Makes a Family looks at one aspect of this complex problem, and it does so with clarity and grace. The issue before the court in What Makes a Family is whether this particular child will be better off with her biological mother’s surviving lesbian lover or with her grandparents. The decision is supposed to turn on the "best interests of the child." Ironically, what finally sways the judge is the expressed interest of the biological mother, not "the best interests of the child." The viewer can easily see what should happen as the child is forced to sit quietly by while granny and her buddies play endless rounds of cards and granddad sleeps away the day on the couch. To see what happens in this true story which premiered in January, tune into Lifetime on Saturday, Feb. 3, at 3 p.m. or Sunday, Feb. 18, at 11 a.m.

This is a smart film by smart people. Anne Meara (yes, she is Jerry Stiller’s real-life mom) does a remarkable job as the grieving mother desperately clutching Heather (Jordy Benattar) to her as all she has left of her daughter Sandy. Sandy’s (Cherry Jones) transformation from healthy lover to lupus-ravaged victim is nothing short of breathtaking. Whoopi plays the attorney about as understatedly as is possible, in what is clearly an effort to keep the message of this important film up front. Brooke Shields puts her Princeton degree to good use in another intelligent choice of roles in this intelligent look at What Makes a Family.

When John W. Stiles isn’t writing for us or his website www.johnstiles.com, he serves the capitalist machine as a useful and productive cog facilitating the subjugation of the middle and lower classes.