I talked the other day about why one needs to carefully consider what information to talk about with a potential birth family - including religion. It's important to keep in mind that with any kind of open adoption situation, the information is bound to come out sooner or later, and one needs to think about what would be better discussed sooner. Today, I wanted to bring up the emotional angle as an adoptive parent.

To get to where we are, many of us have struggled with infertility, possibly years of treatment only to go through the emotional decision to stop and pursue other options, like adoption. We mourn the fact that our children will not look like us or carry our genes, and we celebrate the fact that there are so many options to think about, and that we are excited to embark on a whole new process. In terms of thinking about our children's background and heritage, does religion enter into our thinking?

As we know, it is hard to come by a Jewish adoption agency, and even harder to find a child of Jewish origin available for adoption. It is for this reason that most Jewish families end up adopting a non-Jewish baby or child and having them converted. How much of this do we think about, and how much is taken for granted that this is the way things work? Do we think about the fact that our child will not be born Jewish the same way we discussed the lack of biological connection?

In our case, I honestly can't recall any discussion of the fact that our children would not be born Jewish - maybe my husband and I just took that fact as a given. But we certainly have talked a lot about how to talk to our kids about it - and the fact that we would have to discuss it with them differently as they got older. We still talk about it now, as Anna moves more and more into the questioning phase, and is curious about her own origins. Anna, at four years old, is learning that some people are Jewish, and some people are not. Some people are adopted, some people are not. Some people grow in their Mommy's tummy, and some grow in a different lady's tummy. Some people are brown and some are tan. Some people like ice cream and some don't.

She just hasn't put the pieces together that she looks different than we do because she is adopted, and the lady who carried her for nine months wasn't Jewish. She vaguely remembers being converted (as it happened at age two and a half) but she doesn't know what it means.

The emotional issue regarding having children that were not born Jeiwsh hasn't really been a big deal for us, but it remains to be seen how much affect it will have on Anna as she grows older. And if she regains contact with her birth family, how would it affect her relationship with them? How would it affect our relationship with them?