Watching "Breaking Amish"?

Littledeer84

Anyone else watching this? I was going to work out tonight, but this show sucked me in. I think it is interesting that a couple of the young people who want to leave the Amish are adopted. They were not born into the religion, but adopted into it. How does that work? Do they adopt out of the foster system? Agencies? Do bio parents pick the Amish family to adopt their baby?

brideandbreve

I'm not watching it, but it's being recorded on the DVR. There was a show years and years ago called "Amish in the City" that I loved! It was basically the same concept, and I've always found the Amish fascinating. I'm sure this one will be pretty good, too.

To be honest, I have no idea how the Amish adopt outside of their community. It doesn't seem completely out of line for them to be able to, but I guess I just never considered how they go about doing it.

Hmmm.. now I really want to stay up late and watch tonight's episode.

Littledeer84

Yeah, it makes sense for them to be able to adopt. I just wonder how they are selected. I feel for these kids, it seems to be completly heart wrenching for them to decide to leave their families.

FormerlyKrista555

The thing is, if you, as an Amish person, decide to leave the Amish before you've made your kneeling confession (after your going-about years or "rumschpringe", you can choose to make a kneeling vow that you will be Amish till the day you die),  then you are not supposed to be shunned.  You can still see your family, etc.  Many Amish folks still see their family who are "english" (ie, not Amish).

However, some parents might CHOOSE to shun their kids if they left during rumschpringe, but it's not a typical Amish thing to do.

ETA:  Children are extremely important in the Amish culture, and the more the better. So understandably, if you're having infertility issues, you'd want to grow your family however you could.  Adoption is chosen because I can't picture an Amish bishop in the world who would be ok with an Amish woman going through procedures with an infertility specialist.... I could be wrong.. but it seems unlikely. 

quidditchcapn1120

I watched it.  It really sucked me in.  And the commercials for the upcoming episodes... yowza!  Those kids are going to do things I haven't even done!

weberm05

I watched it....some were from punxy...which is like 40 minutes from my town....so I thought that was neat. I could hunt their families down!!!! ha ha But those amish are soooooo different from the amish that live around my area. Mine are old order amish and they acutally are leaving our area as we speak and moving to upstate new york. Our amish can barely speak English ha ha. They try but mainly speak dutch. Very hard to understand. They are leaving b/c they won't follow any of our rules...they got in a big fight with the county b/c they were dumping sewage on fields....and they won't wear their orange triangles.