Lunchtime at the Smiths.
Cover Story
Love & correction
by Joanne Black
Forceful Christian lobbyist Craig Smith has been ridiculed for his comments on child discipline, so why does one Wellington woman hold him and his wife Barbara in such high regard that she has given them four of her children?
Racheal’s extraordinary life story begins with her upbringing – the youngest of eight in a family where, according to Racheal, her father did his best, her mother did her worst and the mother prevailed. Racheal’s early life was one of physical abuse and incest committed by a brother. Abuse of prescription and illicit drugs was rife. Now grown up, five of Racheal’s six brothers have done time, one for raping his daughter. The cycle of misery turns, though Racheal has tried hard to break it.
At 17, she became pregnant and her mother insisted that she hand over her son to the family. Even though she knew what might happen to him, she felt trapped and gave him up. “I tried a few times to help but was always told, ‘You’re not welcome, go away.’”
Now 19, he already has two children to different mothers. Two years after his birth, Racheal became pregnant again. Although she had no support from her second son’s father, she wanted to keep the baby, but admits she was not up to the job. For example, it was only when she wondered how he kept getting out of his cot that she realised she had been hurling him into it so hard that the bottom slats had broken. She also hit him too hard, and too often, and he went into a succession of foster homes. In some of them, he was abused. Now 17, he is living back home with her, and finishing school. “He is determined to keep out of trouble and determined he will have no children until he is married. He has had a difficult upbringing, but he’s heading in the right direction.”
It was after her third son, Jeremiah, was born to a different father that Racheal had a mental breakdown and Jeremiah went into foster care. A social worker suggested placing him with Craig and Barbara Smith, whom Racheal met for the first time 14 years ago when she put Jeremiah in their care at the age of five and half months.
The Smiths, who both converted to Christianity in their early twenties and worship at Palmerston North’s Reformed Church, were homeschooling their four children when they began fostering Jeremiah. Five months later, Racheal went back to the Smiths, where her son was settled and happy, and said, “’I’m not taking him home.’ I knew I wasn’t adequate, I knew I might hurt him.”
Although not a Christian, she was enormously impressed with the Smiths’ elder children and their parents’ care of them. “The children are respected, they are not demoralised or demeaned in any way. Barbara and Craig instil in their kids values that a lot of people are missing. They have morals, boundaries and respect. I can’t do that for myself. There was no way I could do it for my kids.”
She knows the Smiths’ views on discipline and smacking, but says it is not a dominant feature of how their children are raised. “Theirs is a house of love.”
She asked the Smiths if they would adopt her son and they agreed, Racheal having no idea what would happen next.
In response to an ad seeking surrogate parents, Racheal became pregnant. But the arrangement fell through when the woman organising the surrogacy was found guilty of fraud. And so, Racheal’s fourth son, Jedediah, was born. She knew she could not give him the life the Smiths could. They had supported her throughout the pregnancy, and took Jedediah in when he was 10 days old.
It had not been the Smiths’ intention to add to their family, but Barbara says their overriding concern was to see siblings not separated. At that stage, Racheal’s four sons were in four different places.
When Racheal’s next unplanned pregnancy occurred, three years later and to the same father as Jeremiah and Jedediah, she wanted to keep her new daughter, Kaitlyn. But by the time Kaitlyn, now five, was three and a half, and had been visiting the Smiths regularly, she had moved in with them.
“She had slept in my bed every night and I missed her,” says Racheal. “I would go home every night and cry. Kaitlyn wanted to come home, too, but I knew she had to be with them. Things were getting difficult at home. Her dad wanted to move on, and I wanted to move on.” Racheal now says her priorities were all wrong, but she knew her daughter was safe and would have the opportunity to grow to her full potential with the Smiths.
“People say to me, you’re selfish, and I say, ‘No I’m not.’ I made major mistakes with my second-oldest boy and I know the root of a lot of his problems now is the way I treated him when I was younger. I was not prepared to risk the others. I was abused and it’s not going to happen to my kids.”
The Smiths have not only taken on the children, but also Racheal. She calls Barbara “Mum” and Barbara jokes that Racheal is “my wayward daughter”. She would like her to stop having children, or at least have no more until she has met a man who will properly support her and the child, “and then she could have a baby she could raise herself, and we could give her unlimited help”.
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