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

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[quote=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.[/quote]

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