Child Welfare Study
Christianity: Adoption & Fostering
A Christianity-focused study on adoption, fostering, and child-welfare service.
Across the clearest direct-comparison child-welfare measures, practicing Christians show an average increase of 98%, changing to 82% when including additional measures.
Practicing Christians
2.5×
more likely to have adopted a child
- Focus
- Practicing Christians: 5%
- Baseline
- All U.S. adults: 2%
Christians vs religious nones
3×
more likely to have fostered
- Focus
- Christians: 3x
- Baseline
- Religious nones: 1x
This shows one of the clearest ways practicing Christians stand out: practicing Christians are much more likely to adopt, and newer survey-based fostering evidence also points strongly in the same direction.
Summary scopeHow to summarize the evidenceDefault summary · All confidence
These settings recalculate the summary below. The evidence cards stay visible for transparency.
Current evidence summary
6 of 6 measures in the default summary point in the same direction.
How many summary measures point the same way
The middle result after standardizing each measure
The average across the summary measures in view
The smallest to largest increase in this view
What is driving this view?
Fostering likelihood
200% higherUnited States adults · 2025 survey of 1,515 adults
Adoption rate
150% higherUnited States adults
Perfect altruism score
61% higherUnited States foster parents
Serious adoption consideration
46% higherUnited States adults
Child Welfare & Family Commitment
6 metrics shown below
Practicing Christians vs all adults
Have adopted a child
Practicing Christians lead by +3 pts (150% higher).
This is one of the clearest high-commitment service gaps in the dataset, showing that practicing Christians are much more likely than the broader U.S. adult population to have adopted a child.
Core metric on this page: this compares practicing Christians with all U.S. adults because that is the clearest direct adoption comparison currently available.
Practicing Christians vs all adults
Have seriously considered adoption
Practicing Christians lead by +12 pts (46% higher).
This does not measure completed service, but it does show a substantially larger reservoir of adoption willingness inside practicing-Christian populations.
Core metric on this page, but it measures stated willingness rather than completed adoption and should be read as context for the action metric rather than as the same kind of outcome.
Christians vs religious nones
Relative likelihood of having fostered
Christians lead by +2.00 index points (200% higher).
In CAFO's 2025 survey, Christians were reported as more than three times as likely as agnostic, atheist or no-faith adults to have fostered. That makes this one of the clearest recent fostering gaps we found, even though it comes from an advocacy-source survey.
Supporting metric only: the public report states this gap as a multiplier rather than raw subgroup percentages, so the chart uses a 1x baseline for religious nones. Treated as medium-confidence supporting evidence because the survey was commissioned by a Christian advocacy organization.
Religiously motivated foster parents vs other foster parents
Received the highest altruism score on a five-point foster-parent scale
Religiously motivated foster parents lead by +19 pts (61% higher).
Within the foster-parent population, religious motivation is linked to much higher odds of landing at the top of the study's altruism scale.
Supporting metric only: this comes from an older but peer-reviewed foster-parent dataset and compares religiously motivated foster parents with other foster parents, not Christianity with non-Christianity in the general public.
Religiously motivated foster parents vs other foster parents
Cited giving a home to a child who would otherwise be in an institution as a reason for fostering
Religiously motivated foster parents lead by +14 pts (21% higher).
This reinforces the idea that the foster-parent difference is not only about identity but about the child-focused motivations attached to fostering.
Supporting metric only: this comes from the same older peer-reviewed foster-parent dataset and reflects motives within the foster-parent population rather than a general-population religious comparison.
Religiously motivated foster parents vs other foster parents
Altruism score among foster parents
Religiously motivated foster parents lead by +0.55 index points (15% higher).
Within the foster-parent population, religiously motivated foster parents score higher on the paper's altruism index, which lines up with the adoption-side pattern even though the frame is different.
Supporting metric only: older underlying data and a foster-parent-only comparison frame make this useful for reference, not for headline math.
Method noteSource Selection & Methodology
This page summarizes measured differences in public data. It does not prove why those differences exist.
The study list was developed through a reliability-first review of the strongest publicly available comparisons across these domains. To reduce personal selection bias, I used multiple independent source scans to identify candidate studies, then separated weaker or non-equivalent comparisons rather than folding them into the headline findings.
The core set on this page compares practicing Christians with all U.S. adults because that is where the clearest adoption data currently exist.
The default summary below widens that with a newer survey-based Christian-versus-nones fostering comparison and a separate peer-reviewed foster-parent dataset. Those cards are kept clearly labeled because they use different supporting frames and one of them comes from a Christian advocacy survey.
Source appendix
Barna Group · November 4, 2013
5 Things You Need to Know About Adoption
Used for adoption-support metrics that compare practicing Christians with all U.S. adults.
Open source (external)Christian Alliance for Orphans · June 2025
Engagement in US Foster Care and Adoption: 2025 Data and Trends
CAFO/Pinkston survey report based on 1,515 U.S. adults in March 2025. Used only as medium-confidence supporting evidence because it comes from a Christian advocacy organization and reports some subgroup gaps as ratios rather than raw percentages.
Open source (external)Religions · August 8, 2014
The Empirical Ties between Religious Motivation and Altruism in Foster Parents: Implications for Faith-Based Initiatives in Foster Care and Adoption
Peer-reviewed analysis of the National Survey of Current and Former Foster Parents, used only as a draft/supporting reference because it compares religious motivation within foster parents rather than affiliation in the general public.
Open source (external)
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