to think that being so ideologically pure won't help these kids?

[upsylazy]

DH and I have begun to very tentatively think about fostering/adopting when DCs are older. I have been looking at a few adoption websites and there are a couple where they basically "advertise" kids up for adoption or fostering. I know that the current practice is to match children's ethnic and cultural background with their adoptive parents. While I totally agree with this in theory, the reality is that many children from minority ethnic backgrounds remain in care because they can't find a "matching" family.However, like I said, I do agree with the principle. What has made me really angry is that I've seen 2 children recently where it is specified that they can only be adopted by parents from the same RELIGIOUS background as the child. One of them is a Muslim and one is Jewish. Also, both of them have major special needs - one has autism and a severe learning disability and the other has Down syndrome and is nearly blind. It is hard enough to find people willing to adopt these kind of children without narrowing prospective adopters down to a minority religion (there are only 300,000 Jewish people in the UK. AIBU?

humanoctopus, at baptism the child is welcomed into the church and the parents and godparents take on the responsibility of a Christian upbringing for the child. The young person can then make the choice to "confirm" this later, with a service of Confirmation. In the Bible whole families were baptised including children. However some Christians (usually the more fundamentalist) believe in adult baptism and would agree with you.

It's not the baby's decision to be agnostic/atheist/with no religion either. All any parent can do is make the choice they feel is the right one for their children.

"But if you baptise your baby, how is that a decision made by the baby"

F/Nelson - that's ok - i don't disagree personally with cross-racial adoption as long as the child is educated about their ethnic background.
Obv that would be not easy or even possible in the case of kids with severe learning disabilities.
I just wanted to point out to OP that jews are a race, not just a religion, unlike eg. catholics. For example although my nan was christened as a child she and her family look jewish and have jewish names.