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Schieble became pregnant in 1954 when she and Jandali spent the summer with his family in Homs, Syria. Jandali has stated that he "was very much in love with Joanne ... but sadly, her father was a tyrant, and forbade her to marry me, as I was from Syria. And so she told me she wanted to give the baby up for adoption." Jobs told his official biographer that Schieble's father was dying at the time, Schieble did not want to aggravate him, and both felt that at 23 they were too young to marry. In addition, as there was a strong stigma against bearing a child out of wedlock and raising it as a single mother, and as abortions were illegal and dangerous, adoption was the only option women had in the United States in 1954. According to Jandali, Schieble deliberately did not involve him in the process: "without telling me, Joanne upped and left to move to San Francisco to have the baby without anyone knowing, including me ... she did not want to bring shame onto the family and thought this was the best for everyone." Schieble put herself in the care of a "doctor who sheltered unwed mothers, delivered their babies, and quietly arranged closed adoptions."
Schieble gave birth to Jobs on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, and chose an adoptive couple for him that was "Catholic, well-educated, and wealthy." That couple, however, changed their mind and decided to adopt a girl instead. When the baby boy was then placed with the Bay Area blue collar couple Paul and Clara Jobs, neither of whom had a college education, Schieble refused to sign the adoption papers. She then took the matter to court, attempting to have her baby placed with a different family and only consented to releasing the baby to Paul and Clara after they promised that he would attend college. When Jobs was in high school, Clara admitted to his then-girlfriend, 17-year-old Chrisann Brennan, that she "was too frightened to love [Steve] for the first six months of his life ... I was scared they were going to take him away from me. Even after we won the case, Steve was so difficult a child that by the time he was two I felt we had made a mistake. I wanted to return him." When Chrisann shared this comment with Jobs, he stated that he was aware of it and would later say that he was deeply loved and indulged by Paul and Clara. Many years later, Jobs's wife Laurene also noted that "he felt he had been really blessed by having the two of them as parents." Jobs would become upset when Paul and Clara were referred to as "adoptive parents" as they "were my parents 1,000%." With regard to his biological parents, Jobs referred to them as "my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more." Jandali has also stated that "I really am not his dad. Mr. and Mrs. Jobs are, as they raised him. And I don't want to take their place."
Paul and Clara adopted Jobs's sister Patricia in 1957 and the family moved to Mountain View, California in 1961. It was during this time that Paul built a workbench in his garage for his son in order to "pass along his love of mechanics." Jobs meanwhile admired his father's craftsmanship "because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him ... I wasn't that into fixing cars ... but I was eager to hang out with my dad." By the time he was ten, Jobs was deeply involved in electronics and befriended many of the engineers who lived in the neighborhood. He had difficulty making friends with children his own age, however, and was seen by his classmates as a "loner."
As Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom and tended to resist authority figures, he frequently misbehaved and was suspended a few times. As Clara had taught him to read as a toddler, Jobs stated that he was "pretty bored in school and [had] turned into a little terror... you should have seen us in the third grade, we basically destroyed the teacher." At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he frequently played pranks on others. However, his father (who was abused as a child) never reprimanded him, blaming the school instead for not challenging his brilliant son enough.
Jobs would later credit his fourth grade teacher, Imogene 'Teddy' Hill with turning him around: "She taught an advanced fourth grade class and it took her about a month to get hip to my situation.