Today’s Huffington Post Gay Voices RaiseAChild.US “Let Love Define Family™” series installment features a couple who finds joy and meaning in keeping in touch with the biological family of the son they adopted through foster care and in cherishing his cultural traditions as an important part of his upbringing.
When Maureen Bromley and Marianne Guilfoyle of Southern California opened their lives to a six-year-old child from the foster care system, they also opened their hearts and home to a new culture. Through their son’s eyes, they too delighted in attending the annual Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown (punctuated by loud and festive firecrackers), enjoying Chinese pastries called moon cakes, and giving Jeffrey the traditional gift of money in a red envelope each year — with the color red symbolizing happiness, success and good luck.
When Jeffrey, now 21, was placed with them, he knew very little English, as he was used to speaking Mandarin at home. To help him feel more comfortable and to keep him connected to his heritage, the couple enrolled him Chinese school on Saturdays.
Marianne, now 43, and Maureen, now 48, both had looked forward to parenting from a young age and both chose careers serving children. They met in 1996 while working at private summer camp in Maine. At the time they met, Marianne was living in Chicago and working as a social worker, while Maureen was working as a junior high school teacher in California. After they dated long distance for a year, Marianne relocated to southern California, where she began working with children and families within the foster care system
Both women come from large families. Maureen grew up on a family farm with four sisters and, at one point, the siblings all shared a room. Her mother’s career as a nurse and her loving example inspired Maureen to dream of a big family and to begin a career working with children, which she started at age 17. Marianne also came from a sibling set of five, having always envisioned herself as a parent.
Maureen was the one more drawn to adopting through foster care, so when a friend who worked at Five Acres encouraged her to apply for the foster-adoption program, she did so enthusiastically. Ironically, during the application process, Marianne accepted a job offer at Five Acres. So, for professional reasons, Maureen adopted their son initially as a single parent.
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“Jeffrey never had to move from home to home or school to school while in foster care, so his consistent and predictable schedule and outside support made a big impact on his educational development,” she explained. “So he graduated high school with a grade point average over 3.0 and went on to college.”
“We advocated as much as we could for him in school to help bridge the gap,” said Maureen. “And the thing that’s really nice now is that he has taken on all of the responsibility of figuring out how to get assistance and can advocate for himself in many areas of his life, which is great.”
Today, Jeffrey is a sophomore at California State University Monterey Bay and loves living near the beach. His parents are proud of him and the young man he is becoming.
“It’s wonderful to see the success that Jeff is experiencing and how happy he is in life,” said Marianne. “Those are the biggest rewards.”
Corinne Lightweaver is the Communications Manager at RaiseAChild.US, a national organization headquartered in Hollywood, California that encourages the LGBT community to build families through fostering and adopting to serve the needs of the 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. Since 2011, RaiseAChild.US has run media campaigns and events to educate prospective parents and the public, and has engaged more than 2,500 prospective parents. For information about how you can become a foster or fost/adopt parent, visit www.RaiseAChild.US.
