Cheri Pies, Who Guided Lesbian Couples in Parenthood, Dies at 73

Cheri Pies is a professor of public health who shattered through barriers by publishing her groundbreaking 1985 publication, “Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians,” an authoritative guide to that “gayby boom” of the 1980s and beyond, passed away on July 4, at her residence located in Berkeley, Calif. She was 73 years old.

The reason was cancer, claimed her spouse, Melina Linder.

Later in the course of her life in life, later in life, Dr. Pies (her first name was”Sherry “Sherry”) became a prominent research scientist as well as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, studying the impact of racial and economic disparities in the mortality of infants and their health across generations.

She made her name for herself decades before she stepped into academics with her revolutionary book. The journey started in the 1970s in the 1970s when Dr. Pies was working as an educator in health for Planned Parenthood, counseling straight mothers who were considering having children.

Her focus changed in 1978 when her female partner adopted the birth of a daughter. In 1978, the idea of gay parents being openly gay was not widely accepted within the general public.

In the same year before, New York became the first state to declare that it would never deny adoption applications purely based on homosexuality. The following year, an openly gay couple from California set a precedent in the history of adoption as the first couple to adopt a child.

Dr. Pies was struck by the lack of assistance available to parents of same-sex children and the lack of information on the specific difficulties they confront. She began facilitating workshops at her house in Oakland, Calif., publicizing them by distributing fliers in women’s bookshops and other venues where lesbians gather.

By the time she was in the early 1980s, the word about her work was spreading far out beyond the Bay Area, and she received emails and phone calls from lesbians across the nation. To respond, Dr. Pies compiled her teachings and experience into a book. “Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians,” published by the feminist magazine for lesbians, Spinsters Ink, provided practical guidance on various topics, including the donation of sperm to children, legal concerns surrounding adoption, and ways to establish a supportive network.

Thirty years before same-sex marriage was made legal in the United States, the book set up the floodgates for numerous other books on L.G.B.T.Q. Parenthood.

“She was a pioneer, and those of us who came later built on her work,” G. Dorsey Green, a psychologist and the writer of “The Lesbian Parenting Book” (with D. Merilee Clunis 2003), was quoted in an obituary for”Dr. Pies on Mombian, an online resource for parents of lesbians. “I would recommend her book to my clients. It was when lesbian couples began to think about having kids with out-lenses. Cheri began the conversation.”

Dr. Pies, who earned a master’s in social research at Boston University in 1976, later entered academia. He received a master’s degree in child and maternal health in Berkeley in 1985. He also earned a doctorate in health education in 1993.

She was the director of the family health, maternal, and infant health services for Contra Costa County, located between Berkeley and Oakland; She was captivated by a talk in 2003 delivered by Dr. Michael C. Lu, who became Dean of the Berkeley School of Public Health.

Dr. Lu spoke about a concept known as life course theory. It is based on the belief that the economic and social circumstances at every stage of life, starting from infancy, could have significant, long-lasting effects that last for generations. “What surrounds us shapes us,” Dr. Pies explained in a 2014 talk at Birmingham’s University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Some would say your ZIP code is more important than your genetic code.”

Dr. Pies eventually collaborated with Dr. Lu and others at Berkeley to develop”The Best Baby Zone initiative. A revolutionary program designed to examine and, hopefully, improve children’s health in economically poor neighborhoods across the country.

Then, in 2012, she was appointed the program’s principal investigator after Lu took a post within the Obama administration. The initiative involved providing home health care and working with community leaders to develop parent-child play groups, enhance security in parks, and boost job-related training. The program began with Oakland, New Orleans, and Cincinnati and expanded to six additional cities when Dr. Pies retired from Berkeley. The program continues until today.

“There are people doing large-scale policy work around structural racism, trying to change policy and practice,” Dr. Pies said in an April interview on the Berkeley School of Public Health website. “Best Babies Zone is at the other end of the spectrum, going small-scale to make change for people who can’t wait for policy change to happen.”

The prevalence of low birth weight and sudden infant deaths in these communities was a significant focus of the research program. “Babies are the canary in the mine,” Dr. Pies said in her University of Alabama speech. “If babies aren’t born healthy, you know that something isn’t right in the community.”

Cheramy Jane Pies was born in November. 26th, 1949, in Los Angeles, the second of three daughters born to Morris Pies, a physician, and Doris (Naboshek) Pies, an assistant nurse. (She was later changed in the name of Cheri.)

Growing up in Encino within Encino, in the San Fernando Valley, the bubbly, outgoing Cheri was a massive fan of films, especially musicals such as “My Fair Lady.” I first tasted medical work as a receptionist at her parents’ office.

After graduating from the nearby Birmingham High School, she was accepted at Berkeley in 1967. Here, she graduated with a bachelor’s in social sciences in 1971.

At the time, Berkeley was a boiling pot rife with Vietnam War-era political tensions. In the wake of it was the Free Speech Movement protests that took over the campus in 1964. “Even though I was not actively engaged in it, I was certainly exposed to the politics of it,” she later spoke of the protests.

Along with her husband, Dr. Pies is survived by her two sisters, Lois Goldberg and Stacy Pies.

She would later emulate Berkeley’s 1960s style of activism in her work as a professor and author striving to make a difference in the lives of lesbians who are openly gay parents during the decade of 1980 and later, which increased that by the year 1996, Newsweek journal would reveal that six up to fourteen millions of youngsters in the United States had at least one parent who was gay.

“Adoption agencies report more and more inquiries from prospective parents — especially men — who identify themselves as gay,” the report reads, “and sperm banks say they’re in the midst of what some call a ‘gayby boom’ propelled by lesbians.”

Many of those born in the 1980s would be willing to acknowledge their debts to Dr. Pies for the rest of their life. Linder said in a telephone interview, “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.”