Adopting a baby when your religion is different from most birth mothers

[Anonymous]

I know many Jewish families who have adopted internationally. You would need to be comfortable adopting transracially though, and you seem to already have trouble with the interfaith part. So that may not e the best option for you.
You may need to think about how much of the issue is birthfamilies not wanting their child to be raised Jewish vs you not being comfortable raising a child who was not born Jewish.

[Anonymous]

I am a Jewish adoptive mother with a Jewish husband. We adopted internationally, so no birth mother "chose" us. Our child is being raised Jewish (and did a mikvah conversion as a baby) and identifies as Jewish. I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't know that with any of my kids.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm Jewish and my husband is not. We adopted a baby boy last year and our religion only came up in passing. It did not seem important to our birth mother. We had a bris but I haven't taken him to the mikva yet. I'm pretty sure that our birth mother thinks we are both Christian, but we told her that I was Jewish. I'm not sure she exactly understood what that meant. She was much more concerned with other aspects of the adoption.

If you are interested in chatting more offline, post here and we will make it happen.

[Anonymous]

PP^^ here. I forgot to mention we adopted domestically through an agency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a Jewish adoptive mother with a Jewish husband. We adopted internationally, so no birth mother "chose" us. Our child is being raised Jewish (and did a mikvah conversion as a baby) and identifies as Jewish. I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't know that with any of my kids.

Op here. What country did you adopt from? How did you decide on international vs. Domestic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a Jewish adoptive mother with a Jewish husband. We adopted internationally, so no birth mother "chose" us. Our child is being raised Jewish (and did a mikvah conversion as a baby) and identifies as Jewish. I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't know that with any of my kids.

Op here. What country did you adopt from? How did you decide on international vs. Domestic?

We adopted from China. For some reason I was just drawn to international adoption. I didn't even really consider domestic, although we did look into several different countries before we went with China.

[Anonymous]

18:09 here. I should add that this was a long time ago when adopting from China was much easier. It also means that my child has been Jewish for many years, and she completely identifies as Jewish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know many Jewish families who have adopted internationally. You would need to be comfortable adopting transracially though, and you seem to already have trouble with the interfaith part. So that may not e the best option for you.
You may need to think about how much of the issue is birthfamilies not wanting their child to be raised Jewish vs you not being comfortable raising a child who was not born Jewish.

This. I'd also point out that children who are raised Jewish, but who are not born Jewish, and later leave may be reacting to being treated differently by their parents and others in the community because they weren't born Jewish. It's hard to say what the contributing factors are, but if you adopt will not only you but your religious community accept that child, without distinction (once there's a mikvah, anyway)?

[Anonymous]

Jewish people also give their kids up for adoption, by the way, however I have never heard of this being an issue. I could be wrong, but you are who you are. I wish you the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know many Jewish families who have adopted internationally. You would need to be comfortable adopting transracially though, and you seem to already have trouble with the interfaith part. So that may not e the best option for you.
You may need to think about how much of the issue is birthfamilies not wanting their child to be raised Jewish vs you not being comfortable raising a child who was not born Jewish.

This. I'd also point out that children who are raised Jewish, but who are not born Jewish, and later leave may be reacting to being treated differently by their parents and others in the community because they weren't born Jewish. It's hard to say what the contributing factors are, but if you adopt will not only you but your religious community accept that child, without distinction (once there's a mikvah, anyway)?

???? What the heck are you talking about?? If a kid isn’t Jewish, he or she will go through a conversion to Judaism. It happens all the time. And you obviously don’t know this but Jews are required to treat converts even better than those who were born Jewish. Yes. Just the opposite of what you have said.

[Anonymous]

We are a Jewish family who adopted a child (domestic adoption) whose birth mom was raised Catholic. I have to say that, although the adoption agency knew that we were Jewish, we did not advertise the fact when we put together our materials, though we did have a picture that had a menorah at the bottom so an astute eye could pick it out. Our daughter's birth mom did not know that we were Jewish, but her mom did notice the menorah when she looked at our scrap book after the birth, and asked us. She was upset to find out that we were Jewish, and I don't know what the birth mom would have done had she known beforehand, but it's all worked out and we have a great relationship with the birth family (birth mom and grandmother, primarily). They are happy to know that we celebrate religious holidays and that our daughter will get some religious education, and I think it helped in this case that Christianity is linked to Judaism.

We are not very religious, but we did do a mikveh just incase our daughter at some point in her life needs official records of being Jewish. (Not that I'm a big supporter of that aspect of Jewish law, but i didn't want my daughter to be disadvantaged.) As you may know, according to Jewish law, any child who was converted in this way is supposed to be given the option of nullifying the conversion at bar/bat mitzvah age -- still not sure how we'll approach that but we have awhile to figure it out.

If religion is a big part of your life, I can imagine that it might feel wrong to leave it out of your photobook/description of your family. But it's always something you can bring up yourselves when you match with a birth family. Our take was that it's better to get your foot in the door than to scare people away before they have the chance to get to know you. But I think the most important thing is to go with what you feel is right and what you can live with, and just take it from there. We had a number of adoption professionals tell us that there is a birth family for every adoptive family, meaning that there's someone out there who will find your characteristics a good fit for what they want for their birth child. In your case, if not specifically a Jewish family, it could be someone who's looking for a family for whom faith/religion is important, someone who had a bad experience with the church, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jewish people also give their kids up for adoption, by the way, however I have never heard of this being an issue. I could be wrong, but you are who you are. I wish you the best.

Very rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a Jewish adoptive mother with a Jewish husband. We adopted internationally, so no birth mother "chose" us. Our child is being raised Jewish (and did a mikvah conversion as a baby) and identifies as Jewish. I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't know that with any of my kids.

Op here. What country did you adopt from? How did you decide on international vs. Domestic?

We adopted from China. For some reason I was just drawn to international adoption. I didn't even really consider domestic, although we did look into several different countries before we went with China.

I'm not an adoptive parent, although I once considered it seriously before having an unexpected pregnancy. International adoption seems SO much easier, IMHO. Parents who adopt internationally don't have to deal with the caprices of birth mothers. There was something about our family that made me believe we would not go to the top of the list of a birthmother, so I knew that international adoption would be much simpler for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a Jewish adoptive mother with a Jewish husband. We adopted internationally, so no birth mother "chose" us. Our child is being raised Jewish (and did a mikvah conversion as a baby) and identifies as Jewish. I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't know that with any of my kids.

Op here. What country did you adopt from? How did you decide on international vs. Domestic?

We adopted from China. For some reason I was just drawn to international adoption. I didn't even really consider domestic, although we did look into several different countries before we went with China.

I'm not an adoptive parent, although I once considered it seriously before having an unexpected pregnancy. International adoption seems SO much easier, IMHO. Parents who adopt internationally don't have to deal with the caprices of birth mothers. There was something about our family that made me believe we would not go to the top of the list of a birthmother, so I knew that international adoption would be much simpler for us.

True, but you will not get an infant if you adopt internationally. And the children may have a range of special needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a Jewish adoptive mother with a Jewish husband. We adopted internationally, so no birth mother "chose" us. Our child is being raised Jewish (and did a mikvah conversion as a baby) and identifies as Jewish. I don't know what will happen in the future, but I don't know that with any of my kids.

Op here. What country did you adopt from? How did you decide on international vs. Domestic?

We adopted from China. For some reason I was just drawn to international adoption. I didn't even really consider domestic, although we did look into several different countries before we went with China.

I'm not an adoptive parent, although I once considered it seriously before having an unexpected pregnancy. International adoption seems SO much easier, IMHO. Parents who adopt internationally don't have to deal with the caprices of birth mothers. There was something about our family that made me believe we would not go to the top of the list of a birthmother, so I knew that international adoption would be much simpler for us.

True, but you will not get an infant if you adopt internationally. And the children may have a range of special needs.

Any child can have a range of special needs - even those born to you. I am the PP who adopted from China. My child was 9 months when I adopted her. She is the easiest of my 3 children (the other two of whom I gave birth to). You really just never know what you are going to get no matter from where or how your kids come to you. Of course, if you give birth to your kids, you know you will get an infant.