When AIDS Strikes Parents
Who will care for a new generation of orphans -
and the youngsters soon to become orphans?
TIME, November 1, 1993 - By CHRISTINE GORMAN
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NICOLE KNOWS more about AIDS than most
children her age. She doesn't have the disease or carry the virus, but she has felt its
deadly sting just the same. AIDS has taken both her parents. "I was nine years old
when my mother died." Nicole (not her real name) calmly begins her story. "She
told me that my father did drugs and died Of AIDS, and that she got it from him."
Nicole's grownup demeanor disappears, however, when she starts to read aloud a letter she
wrote in the year after her mother died: "Dear Mom ... I miss you so much. That day
at the funeral I just looked at you, and I saw someone else in the coffin. I was saying to
myself, 'That cant be my mother.' She is still in the hospital ... I knew people had to
die. But I never thought about you dying."
| Nicole's story is becoming an all too common one in the age Of AIDS. At
least 30,000 children in the U.S. have lost one or both parents to the scourge, and over
the next seven years that number is expected to at least triple. Within this group, Nicole
is relatively lucky. She lives with her aunt on Manhattan's Lower East Side, does well in
school and dreams of becoming a pediatrician. But perhaps half the AIDS orphans could wind
up living in the streets or falling into an overloaded foster-care system. "We're
seeing some 3,000 children in the Chicago area who will need placement very soon."
says Cathy Blanford of the Lutheran Social Services of Illinois. "I expect the
numbers will grow way beyond what anyone can imagine." No
one thought much about this dilemma back when AIDS was considered a disease of unmarried
homosexual men. Now women are the fastest-growing segment of the AIDS population. From
1991 to 1992 the number of new cases among women jumped 10%, compared with 2.5% for men.
Some of these women have husbands or boy-friends who are bisexual; others pick up the
virus because they or their lovers are drug addicts who use contaminated needles. The
majority have children. |
A nine-year-old boy lost both parents to AIDS drew his mother
in heaven, hovering over his new family on earth.
|
Although the toll is highest in drug-ridden ghettos, this
is not just a big-city phenomenon. Rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, best known for
Amish festivals and shoofly pie, has seen its drug problems increase as people have moved
in from poor neighborhoods in New Yohave either lost or are about to lose a parent to the
disease. Often, infected mothers leave large cities and return to places where they grew
up, where aunts and grandmothers can take in the children. "Perhaps half the women we
see have come home to die." says Jacquelyn Clymore of the AIDS Service Agency in
Raleigh, North Carolina.
In the Bronx, Michael, 11, and Jose, 9, learned from their mother that
is infected with the deadly virus
|
It is hard enough for a child to lose a parent. But when AIDS is the
killer, the pain is all the more profound. Since most of the infected mothers are single
parents, no father is around to fill the void. If the mother's drug use had caused her
family to spurn her, relatives may be unwilling to care for her kids. Moreover, the stigma
of AIDS causes many families to keep the cause of death quiet. The surviving children are
isolated in their shame. "If they know, they usually don't tell anybody," Clymore
notes. "Not their best friend, not their teachers, not anybody." The silence takes its toll. With no acceptable outlet for their rage or grief,
children often cause trouble in school. Boys especially, may run afoul of the police.
Some teenagers turn to indiscriminate sex or shooting drugs-as though
they are daring the AIDS virus to do to them what it did to their parents. |
But the cycle does not have to repeat itself A growing
number of community organizations are trying to prevent further tragedy by starting
support groups for children orphaned or about to be orphaned by AIDS. Over the past three
years, counselors at the St. Francis Center in Washington have helped the kids cope with
depression, fear of abandonment, and the lifelike visions some have of their dead parents.
"The teenagers, in particular, are caught in a squeeze," says Dottie
Ward-Wimmer, a nurse at St. Francis who specializes in grief counseling. "They're
older. They're smarter. They know that if their mother had cancer, people would feel sorry
for them rather than shun them." Professionals at the Henry Street Settlement in New
York City have found that if youngsters talk with one another about what they are going
through, they are less likely to fall into self-destructive behavior. They also have an
easier time adjusting to their new family.
Social and health agencies are trying to reach more AIDS sufferers before they pass away
so that their children can be better prepared. That's not easy. Denial and shame are
sometimes so strong that some parents never admit, to officials or anyone else, that they
have AIDS. Marina Alvarez is not one of them. She founded a support group in the Bronx,
New York, for mothers like herself who are HIV Positive. "Information dispels
fear," she says. "I can't say that my sons are absolutely O.K. with my illness.
I don't think anybody's ever O.K. with a life-threatening illness. But they don't live in
shame."
About half the ailing parents die before they designate anyone to take custody of their
children. To improve that statistic, both Illinois and New York have enacted laws in the
past year that allow parents to name a standby guardian to care for their children on a
temporary basis. That way parents with AIDS do not have to give up permanent custody every
time they go into the hospital, and they can know who will take in their children after
death comes. "We try to match people up while the birth parents are still healthy
enough to make good decisions." says Blanford of her Chicago program. "It helps
the children make the transition because they have a sense from their parents that this is
O.K."
After the guardians take over comes the hard part. The orphans need counseling, and their
new families, which may have doubled in size, often require temporary financial and
housing support. "For many families a little help at a critical time can make a big
difference." says Carol Levine of the AIDS Orphans Project in New York. Otherwise,
the newly blended families can break apart under the strain, and the orphans end up in
foster care.
Some social workers believe communities may have to open orphanages. But they envision
institutions that are smaller and more homelike than the cheerless warehouses of old.
Whatever the strategy, society will need to pay more attention to AIDS orphans.
"In the next 10 years a lot of the families who are presently coping will not be
able to do it any longer," Levine predicts. "There are not enough
grandmothers to raise these children."
Children With AIDS Project of America
P.O. Box 23778
Tempe AZ 85285-3778
(480) 774-9718
FAX (480) 921-0449
E-Mail: Jim Jenkins
email webmaster for comments/questions
last updated
February 08, 2006
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