Adult children dating - different faiths and races

Parent Cafe
101

My husband and I are different religions and we have raised our three wonderful children without religion. It has not been a problem. I like to validate our decision with articles like this.

http://www.bustle.com/articles/62411-raising-children-without-religion-may-be-a-better-alternative-suggests-new-research

My S has been dating a black woman since they met at college. (he’s 25, she’s 23) They have been off and on with her currently in the Peace Corp in Zambia. She’s a wonderful young woman and I would feel lucky to have her in the family. Sometimes I do wonder about the hurdles they may face. And, I have to admit I was a bit nervous to tell my 89 year old mom, but once she met her she also liked her a lot. I just want my son to be happy. It’s not about me.

102

I grew up in a similar church. There is a Catholic church across the street and it is very common for its priest or one of my pastors to show up in the other’s congregation without warning (like Waldo), and we have always had seders and also Eid fast breaking. Those things are wonderful and special, but they aren’t our traditions, so it’s different. Not worse, just different. I happen to like our traditions better, which is why I am still a member of my church! I have learned here on CC that denominations like ours are very unfamiliar to many people - people who aren’t Christian and people who are geographically located where fundamentalist Christian denominations are the norm. I suspect that my practice has more in common with reform Judaism than with the Duggars. I absolutely didn’t know before I joined CC how much misinformation or lack of information exists with regard to the range of Christian denominations in the US. I would be very concerned, and probably not silent, if any of my kids brought home a fundie of any variation.

103

Just a thought. I sometimes wonder if the “shock/shivers/jolt” or whatever occurs when this is truly the FIRST “outside of the family norm/tradition” moment. If over the years the family has followed a straight steady course of religion/race/gender in terms of relationships - and then one family member “strays” - be that to date a person of an alternate religion, color or sex - perhaps it IS a shock to the balance of the family.

The best advice there from me? You can survive it - if you open your eyes, ears and heart to see the person involved and really, really think -what defines people??? For me, as @Embracethemess, says it’s choosing mates AND friends that treat us and others well.

104

It doesn’t have to be in terms of religion/race/gender. Could be anything that deviates from the norm/expected. It just happens that race/religion/relationships are the topic of this thread. We’ve all seen the shocked/shivers/jolt threads the first time a kid doesn’t come home for the holidays after graduating college and getting a job. Same feeling, different topic.

As far as defining people, self-definition is a big part of that. If I define myself as Christian/Jew/Muslim, then that’s what I am and no one should try to minimize that. Unless of course I define myself as tall, in which case, call the nice men with the butterfly nets.

This is just another step on the letting go process. Each parent will have a different path, for some religion will be a milestone, for others not so much. We all work through it in different ways, it just happens that when religion/race/gender are involved, it’s less acceptable to work through it honestly. Whereas, say, a mom being concerned because the son became an investment banker when she wanted him to join the Peace Corps wouldn’t cause hurt feelings in the same way.

105

<<<
Choosing to follow one faith alienates one set of grandparents, b


[QUOTE=""]

[/QUOTE]

I have a problem with this statement. If this were true, then all the families here who have mixed-faith-marriages and are raising their kids in one faith, are “alienating” one parent. And I don’t think that is true.

I’m not saying that any of this is easy. For my own reasons, I only mostly dated Catholics because I didn’t want a mixed home. However, the thought that I would feel alienated from any future grandkids because their parents chose to raise them in another faith is just crazy to me.

We have both ways going on in H’s and my extended families…Catholics and Jewish marriages, some kids are raised Catholic and some are raised Jewish. The Grands may not be ecstatic, but I have seen nothing but total love between the Grands and the children. H’s sister is raising her 4 children Jewish. My devout Catholic MIL had no issues with it at all. Gracefully attended their Bat/Bas Mitzvahs. My cousin’s Catholic child is probably much closer to his Jewish Grandma than he is to his Catholic Grandma. Jewish Grandma sees him every weekend, attended all of his functions (religious and not), and insisted on paying his USC tuition (Go Grandma C!) Grandma C attends all the extended family’s Christmas festivities (we’ve all been thru a lot with Grandma C, she’s been widowed 3 times, bless her heart), and my cousin makes sure that her child attends anything that Grandma C wants him to attend during her faith’s holidays.

Relationship with grandkids should have little to do with religious faith. You’re devoted to them because they’re your children’s children.

106

Just curious; Are there many cases of very observant children dating someone outside? I’d think if children are observant, they’d be attracted to the same. If it’s less observant children dating outside, then the issue is the children not being serious with their religion. If religion doesn’t matter to them so much, dating outside is who they are and should be respected as their choice. To them how their children are raised may not matter.

107

^^I don’t disagree with this. Another step in the process of letting go - but also of accepting others and our kids/family choices.

My family really is a mix of religion. Like I mentioned my Dad’s side raised Catholic. My mom’s side - now many, many more relatives are Jewish. I personally feel blessed to have an understanding and celebration of both - and even better, a participation in both when and where I feel comfortable.

I hope for all people - especially my children to have “faith” - most of all, in people. It is ok for that faith to be somewhat of a square peg instead of a perfectly round hole. Purely my viewpoint. :slight_smile:

108

^^Yes, abasket. This is new territory for me. I have been sort of a “turtle” in it’s shell. My immediate family have all married Jewish spouses and raised their children Jewish. My sisters kids are all dating Jewish people. I just never imagined anything else. So yes on the shivers. But that just means it was an initial shock and it also means that he will celebrate Christmas with someone he cares about and likes her family very much too. Life will certainly not end! She happens to be an amazing girl and I can see why he is attracted to her. But honestly it is a shock since this is the first time one of my two boys is dating anyone long term. And they happen to not be Jewish. Since I have cousins that have married non-Jews & Black men and they have all survived and celebrated all holidays, then I see what can lie ahead for my children! As I said earlier, my Jewish first cousin married a Black man, raised her half Black & half White daughter Jewish who now has a son of her own. Anything is possible and I need to open my eyes that this is the way of the world now more so each generation.

109

I agree completely.

I just don’t think worrying ahead of time is the same thing as barring the door forever. It really is ok to be concerned that if the SO’s family is a different faith or race, or wealthier, or possessed of a vacation home in Hawaii, they might become the favored parents/grandparents. Do we act on it? No. But anyone who says they don’t have such things poking in their brain from time to time is probably not telling the whole truth. It’s that whole mom thing. If there is something out there that could be worried about, we will find it!

110

I have to say I did worry a bit when my D was dating a jewish boy. Not because of the religion, rather the culture. His mom was way more involved in her son’s relationship than I could ever be. They spent most their time at my house with me around but his mom knew a lot more what’s going on between them than I did. I am sure not every jewish families are like that. On the average tho, they are more involved in their kids’ life. I would prefer my D not marry a mama’s boy with his mom present at every life decision.

111

Everyone feels differently about this. For me, I’m not too caught up with the religion, race, or gender of my kids’ prospective spouses. In some ways, it can be easier if one’s spouse is the opposite gender and the same religion and race, because it is the norm, so to speak, and possibly more “acceptable” to others and all the commonalties are sort of built in. I married the opposite gender and the same race and religion as myself. I’m sure that makes some things easier with the outside world and also raising kids. But I don’t think it is all that significant when it comes to happiness. So, with my own kids, I don’t truly feel strongly about if their spouses are a different race or religion or of the same gender, or not. Really doesn’t phase me a real lot. What does phase me a LOT is seeing them in love and happy with their partners. That pretty much trumps everything else. These other details can be worked out and maybe is more of a deal to others viewing them than to the couple themselves. I also care about my kids’ partners’ parents accepting them as daughter-in-laws. So that all trumps everything else.

112

CCC - If you missed my first post, I’m a 1st generation American, the child of Holocaust survivors, so I was certainly raised to believe it would be a “sin” to marry outside the faith. In good conscience, though, I couldn’t force my child to marry a Jew, which was certainly expected of me. It’s more important to me that my son and DIL love each other and are good to each other than they be the same religion. I’m not concerned that my son will turn away from his religion, and DIL has embraced it, but is not converting. I would hope that their children are exposed to Judaism, and considering that they celebrate Jewish holidays as a couple, I’d assume they’d still do that when they have children. I wonder what her family thinks, especially her more strictly Christian father.

Now when it comes to S2, who’s not dating right now, I have no idea. He’s never been as committed to following the religion as his older brother.

113

Last thing I’ll throw in. Being an atheist doesn’t equate to a lack of faith. It’s just that we don’t have it in a deity.

My faith is in people. I have faith that people are fundamentally good and base most of my worldviews on that premise.

Carry on.

114

My mother is a Catholic, and my father was raised a Lutheran, although to my knowledge he never attended a Lutheran service as an adult. When I was a child, we went to church with my mother, went to Catechism, and so forth. My father never converted. My mother has always been a very free-thinking Catholic. She hews to what she considers the essentials of the faith, without interest in theological niceties and rules that she considers arbitrary and meaningless. My mother’s mother, the only surviving parent when they married, adored my father and AFAIK never had a qualm. (But then she, an Irish Catholic, had married a Protestant herself.)

When we returned to the US after a few years in England, during which I was in boarding school, I dutifully went to church on Sunday with my mother. She noticed that I spent most of the time thumbing through the missal and reading. She told me that I shouldn’t feel that I had to go to church for her sake. I said that in that case I wouldn’t, and I never heard another word about it. I was 15 or 16 at the time.

When I was in my 30s, H and I decided to look for a church, because we wanted to structure a moral/ethical/spiritual dimension into our lives. The only two we didn’t consider were Christian Science (he was raised in it and considered it dangerous nonsense) and Catholicism. We eventually went to a Unitarian Universalist service, and I knew immediately that this was what I had been from the age of 7 or so, when I started to question. As far as belief in a conventional Supreme Being is concerned, I am an atheist.

I would not be happy about the prospect of my S marrying a woman who was intensely involved in most religions, some more than others, but I simply cannot imagine him doing so. He declared himself to be an atheist at age 6, but a few years ago told me that he now considered himself an agnostic, since it was in his opinion foolish to declare certainty one way or the other. Intellectual matters are important to him, and it is difficult to imagine him being compatible with a woman who genuinely and strongly believed in the concept of salvation through a deity, a belief that he does not share. I would be really unhappy if he married a woman who was a member of a religion that tended to exclude and/or condemn others, such as his atheist parents and gay godfather.

His GFs have been of various races (including one who had an AA father and Saudi Arabian mother…that’s an unusual combo!) and that doesn’t matter to me at all. His current GF is from mainland China, and I have no idea what her religious beliefs, if any, are. (Although S informed me in a quizzical manner that “despite the fact that she is a scientist” she believes in the healing power of certain types of jade worn close to the body.)

Regarding grandchildren, I think that when you are the parent of a son, you are aware that you might tend to come second after the DIL’s parents anyway. If the DIL and her parents share a religious faith and community/ethnicity that excludes you, it may be that much more likely.

115

“Yet, I have seen several young men in our family marry non-Jews. The household becomes Christian and the children are raised as Christian - and the Jewish grandparents are the outsiders. That’s the scenario that most concerns me.”

@rockvillemom That’s so interesting. A lot of my friends and relatives who were raised Christian (or in agnostic homes that followed Christian traditions, i.e. celebrating Christmas and the Easter “bunny”) married Jews. Two members of my family, too. And in EVERY case, the Jewish traditions were incorporated into the family’s life – in a few, they dominated. In all these cases, the Jewish spouse made it a point to raise the children with a strong sense of Jewish identity, even in non-believing families. I just figured that was pretty much the case with all marriages between Jews and Christians: because the Jewish culture is less prevalent in our overall American culture, families tried to emphasize it more at home.

Clearly, from your experience, that’s not the case.

116

[QUOTE=""]
Just curious; Are there many cases of very observant children dating someone outside? I'd think if children are observant, they'd be attracted to the same. If it's less observant children dating outside, then the issue is the children not being serious with their religion. If religion doesn't matter to them so much, dating outside is who they are and should be respected as their choice. To them how their children are raised may not matter.

[/QUOTE]

I know that many do look at it this way, and that’s why many observant/devout folks often don’t date outside their faith. College groups like Hillel are great at providing a social atmosphere for faithful kids to meet (and hopefully date) other faithful kids. There are also historically Jewish Greek Houses that many parents hope their kids join for another source of faithful dating.

However, I think many of us know religious people who have married outside their faith. Maybe they “fell in love” outside of dating? My cousin and her Jewish H fell in love while classmates in college. They weren’t dating at first. They were both in the same major, took many of the same classes, belonged to the same study group…and there you go!

There seems to be a LOT of Jewish/Catholic marriages. I think that’s because both groups tend to be very family-oriented, have some ethnic leanings and traditions, and that is attractive.

My MIL was very devout Catholic, but my FIL was Jewish. I don’t know the backstory of their relationship. They found some sort of common ground and were happily married for over 55 years before FIL died. I know for a fact that there was no fighting at all about religion and raising their 8 kids Catholic. FIL was the “I gave my word, and that’s that” sort of person. He never would have back-pedaled or undermined.

Obviously that isn’t always the case. I know that many Jewish folks here have experienced situations where the Christian spouse agrees to raise the kids Jewish, but then a Christmas tree shows up at some point, and things get blurred. I can understand the concerns.

My mom was engaged to a non-Catholic (before my dad), and she had to break off the engagement a few days before the wedding because her fiance said that he wasn’t sure he still wanted their kids to be raised Catholic. After that, mom only dated Catholics. She later encouraged, but did not demand, her 7 kids to do the same.

I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to dismiss someone as not being strong enough in their faith if they date/marry outside. and…there are some areas of the country where a person may not know many with the same faith.

Heck, there are people on this forum that have “sort of” excused married people for “falling in love” with others and leaving their marriages, which I think is a bigger “no no” since a married person shouldn’t even be “open” to finding love elsewhere. I’ve seen posts on CC where people have said things like, “married people sometimes fall in love with others; it happens. oh well.” That seems to get a bigger pass, with an expectation that the abandoned spouse and children shouldn’t harbor any negative feelings. THOSE grandparents should be annoyed as heck at their wandering children for wrecking their families (and messing up the family trees! lol)

But…back to the OP…grandchildren are a different situation. If grandchildren are raised in a different faith, then the parents do need to teach their children some sort of restraint, out of respect. I know that my H and his siblings didn’t “shove their Catholic upbringing” in their Jewish Grands’ faces. That would be rude and unloving.

117

“If it’s less observant children dating outside, then the issue is the children not being serious with their religion. If religion doesn’t matter to them so much, dating outside is who they are and should be respected as their choice.”

Of course, everyone’s choices should be respected, but it’s not just a question of religion for Jews. I’m sure there are other communities with analogous faith/nation entanglements, though I am not familiar with them.

Judaism is unlike Christianity in that it is a culture and a nation in diaspora, not just a faith. There are Jews who are not observant of religious law but powerfully committed to building the nation and community. That’s often what’s driving the older generation when they have trouble with intermarriage, as opposed to religion per se. Looking at my sister’s family, her observant in-laws were thrilled that their atheist Jewish son was marrying a fellow Jew, even though she’s also an atheist (with Buddhist practices). They knew there wasn’t going to be any religious practice in that household no matter what, but they still wanted a Jewish DIL.

Needless to say, some Jews are bigots, just as every group has its bigots. That’s a factor in some families, too. But sometimes it’s really about feeling an obligation to build up the nation.

118

With respect, it’s a little hard to be an American and not already be aware of Christianity. Most non-Christians have awareness by the bucketsfull.

Something our Christian brothers and sisters may not be aware of, though, is that several religions have a specific prohibition against assimilation and apostasy. For example, Chanukah-- often incorrectly seen as “Jewish Christmas” in mainstream culture-- is actually a celebration of the fight against being absorbed into a larger culture and of the maintenance of one’s own society’s beliefs. So there’s often some religious and cultural loading to Christmas beyond just “ooh, let’s watch the Christians drink cocoa and open presents from Santa”…or even going to midnight Mass and watching the lights and music.

119

Regarding (actual or possible) children of Jewish / non-Jewish marriages described in many posts here, does the question of matrilineal versus patrilineal descent come up for the posters who posted them?

120

I am a non-Jew married to a Jew raising two Jewish daughters. Our synagogue allows for patrilineal descent and both of our daughters were Bat Mitzvahed. Both strongly self-identify as Jewish. My oldest daughter has been to Israel twice. My youngest considered going to Israel for part of her current Gap Year. I know she will go at some point.They know that some will not consider them Jewish enough. But for now, the people they care about consider them Jewish and that is enough. Ironically, my oldest is now dating a non-Jewish man and I worry that her identity will be subsumed. She assures me he will let her raise the kids Jewish so we’ll see. I figure I owe it to my incredibly loving, tolerant, and accepting mother-in-law (may her memory be a blessing) to keep it going for another generation.