By FELICIA R. LEE

As the 20th century draws to a close, a new class of orphans is expected to alter the social landscape significantly: children from mostly female-headed households who will lose their mothers to AIDS. 

Unless the course of the epidemic changes dramatically, experts project that by the year 2000 as many as 125,000 motherless children under the age of 18 -- the great majority of them uninfected by the virus -- will begin to affect already burdened social services in major American cities. Things will get immeasurably worse in such places, where children already spend years going from foster home to foster home and caseworkers are overwhelmed by long lists of families needing everything from housing to medical care.

Unlike Africa, where AIDS has always been considered a disease that affects entire families and communities, the disease here is still associated with gay men and individuals not coping with children, said David Michaels, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York Medical School who has studied the phenomenon.

"We have to reconceptualize AIDS, " Mr. Michaels said. "We have to begin realizing it has ramifications far beyond that of one seriously ill person."

It is expected that about a third of the children orphaned will be from New York City, which has the nation's largest number of AIDS cases. Other cities expected to be hard hit are Miami, Los Angeles, Washington, Newark and San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to the Orphan Project, a research group that develops policies to meet the needs of such children.

Psychologists say that beyond the need to clothe, house and feed children whose parents have died of AIDS, these children will need counseling and support to deal with the trauma of losing their mothers and possibly their brothers and sisters.

"There's a lot of anger," said Theresa Kreibick, program director of the Family Place, a Newark program that counsels children in families with AIDS.  "There is a fear of abandonment -- who's going to be taking care of me when my mom is gone? If the mother has been hospitalized recently, there is a lot of acting out and fidgeting."

In addition, using the same projections by epidemiologists, as many as 98,000 young people 18 and older will become motherless and in some cases be called upon to care for younger family members.

The Orphan Project's study of the number of youths orphaned by AIDS in this country appeared in the Dec. 23-30 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association. It was done in conjunction with Mr. Michaels, who used a mathematical model that took into account the number of women under age 50 who die of H.I.V.-related disease, their fertility rates and infant mortality rates.

Carol Levine, the Orphan Project's executive director, said it was probably among the first such studies of what she calls "the silent legacy" of AIDS.  Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reached similar estimates using what one expert there described as a different, "extremely conservative" model.

"The AIDS epidemic has unfolded so fast that people could not adjust to all its ramifications," Ms. Levine said. "To me, the orphans are one of the most far-reaching of the social impacts of the epidemic. The striking thing is how little we know about what happens to these children."

Ms. Levine said most other studies have focused on pediatric AIDS cases, when in fact only 1 out of 3 children born to a woman with AIDS will be infected with the virus. Nationally, there are an estimated 4,000 cases of AIDS in children under 13 years old.

As younger women become infected with the virus, the number of children with AIDS and the number of orphans will probably increase. By 1989 AIDS had become the sixth leading cause of death nationwide among women 15 to 44 years old. In Newark, more than one-fourth of people with AIDS are women.

Dr. Blake Caldwell, an epidemiologist with the C.D.C., noted that women who became infected this year might not die until some time in the next century -- beyond the time experts have even begun to make projections. The disease has a median 10-year incubation period, Dr. Caldwell said.

Most of these orphans will be the children of poor black or Hispanic women whose families are already dealing with stresses like drug addiction, inadequate housing and health care. Relatives who might in other circumstances be called upon to care for the children often shun them because of the stigma attached to AIDS. 

Ms. Kreibick said that stigma plays out in many ways. Some families have been evicted when a parent's illness is discovered. The virus also often becomes a family secret, with the children unable to confide in friends or school officials, even as they miss classes because of crises related to their mother's health.

Ms. Levine said that although there are several programs and services in a number of cities -- bereavement groups, support groups for the children's caretakers, special foster care plans -- there has been little in the way of a comprehensive national policy or resources.

In New York City, for example, the Child Welfare Administration has set up the Permanency Planning Project to match foster parents with H.I.V.-positive mothers and their children well before the parent dies. In Miami, the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Miami has for the past 10 years worked with such families on issues like housing and custody plans.

Ana Garcia, a University of Miami social worker, is part of Project Smile, which recruits and trains foster parents for children orphaned by AIDS. Still, the emphasis is on children who are themselves infected. Of the 47 children currently in licensed foster homes, 25 have the virus. The status of the others is unknown.

"Kids who are not H.I.V. positive go into regular foster care and we don't keep track of them," Ms. Garcia said. "Oh, man, it's a huge problem and this is a very poor state for women and children. With our foster care system already burdened, this is the tip of the iceberg. And our families are huge -- we have one mom who has nine children."

Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company