Placing a child up for adoption is never an easy decision. You could say that it ranks up there as one of the most difficult decisions a parent could make.
But sometimes, this decision ends up being for the best, as it gives a child a better life.
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Below, here are 10+ celebrities who placed children up for adoption.
1. Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra
Fans got the see the couple’s adoption plan for their daughter, Carly, on 16 and Pregnant .
At the time, they were teenagers and saw this decision as the best fit for them and their daughter. They went on to marry and have two more kids.
2. Rod Stewart
When the star was just 17, he had a child with his art student girlfriend. But since they were young, they put Sarah Streeter up for adoption.
This is something that Stewart still has guilt over , despite forging a relationship with her as an adult.
3. Joni Mitchell
The singer got incredibly candid in her book , Joni Mitchell, In Her Own Words Conversations with Malka Marom .
In it, she revealed that her boyfriend left her when she was three months pregnant with her first child.
This led to the difficult decision to place a girl called Kelly, who would later be renamed Kilauren, up for adoption in 1965.
This, compiled with other traumatic events, caused her to quit music for two years. “That was the year I burst into tears,” she wrote.
4. David Crosby
There is a happy ending with this adoption story!
While Crosby put his son, James Raymond, up for adoption in 1962, the father and son later reunited on stage and even made music together.
5. Kate Mulgrew
The Orange Is the New Black star placed her baby daughter up for adoption at 22. Her beliefs stopped her from getting an abortion.
It’s a good thing the latter didn’t happen since Mulgrew got to reunite with her daughter 20 years later.
6. Patti Smith
The rocker fittingly named her award-winning memoir, Just Kids since that’s exactly what she was — just a kid — when she discovered that she was pregnant.
To avoid judgment from neighbors, her mother sent her away to a foster home.
It was there that Smith decided to make an adoption plan for her unborn child.
“Though I never questioned my decision to give my child up for adoption, I learned that to give life and walk away was not so easy,” Smith wrote.
7. Jay Thomas
The actor was at the height of his fame — he starred on hit shows, Mork & Mindy and Cheers — when his girlfriend discovered that she was pregnant.
After a lot of discussions, they decided that the timing to have a child wasn’t right .
8. Dog the Bounty Hunter
While the reality star (real name: Duane Lee Chapman) had his son placed for adoption many years ago, he actually didn’t know about his existence until his ex committed suicide.
The pair ended up reconnecting later in life.
9. Hank Williams Sr.
The country music star had a daughter placed for adoption when he was 29, but this wasn’t by choice.
Tragically, Williams passed away five days after Jett was born. She wrote about this in her autobiography, Ain’t Nothin As Sweet As My Baby .
10. Michelle Money
Fans will recognize the star from the Bachelor franchise.
She’s always been so open and honest about her life, including when she revealed that she placed her child up for adoption when she was 15.
“The decision to place this baby up for adoption was not an easy one,” she said in a promotional video for the skincare brand, PMD.
“But it was the right one,” she continued. “When the moment came to say good bye and hand him over to the social worker, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
11. Jack Wagner
Like Dog the Bounty Hunter, the General Hospital actor discovered that his child was placed for adoption without his consent.
Thankfully, his daughter ended up finding him when she was 23. “It’s a real blessing,” he said about their relationship today.
12. Sinead Cusack
The actress was just 19 when she became pregnant with the theatre director at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland.
Since she was afraid of being an unwed mother in Catholic Ireland, she placed her child up for adoption.
13. Mercedes Ruehl
The actress, known for her roles in Big and Radio Days , placed her son up for adoption when she was young because she didn’t have “the emotional development or the economic capability” to raise the child.
Thankfully, there is a happy ending behind all this, as it was actually one of her movies that later reconnected the mother and son later in life.
“So he went out by himself late one night, rented ‘The Fisher King,’ watched the whole thing, not knowing if his mother was (co-star) Amanda Plummer or myself,” Ruehl recalled to Spokesman .
14. Roseanne Barr
When the Roseanne actress found herself pregnant as a teenager in 1971, she had every intention to keep her child.
But her feelings soon changed when she found herself in an unfortunate situation of living on welfare in a bad area.
The final straw came when she saw cockroaches coming out of the faucet of the rented room she was staying at.
“I gave my baby up to the Jewish Family & Children’s Service in Denver,” she told People in 1989.
“They said they had a couple that had waited seven years for a Jewish baby.”
