Steven Paul Jobs was an American entrepreneur, business magnate, inventor, and industrial designer. He was the chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Apple Inc. ; CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar;
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Jobs's biological mother Schieble became pregnant with him in 1954 when she and Jandali spent the summer with his family in 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.) 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) 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.The couple changed their mind, however, and decided to adopt a girl instead. The baby boy was then placed with the couple Paul and Clara Jobs, neither of whom had a college education, and Schieble refused to sign the adoption papers. She then took the matter to court in an attempt 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 Steve Jobs was in high school, his mother Clara admitted to his girlfriend, 17-year-old , 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."[[17]]( When Chrisann shared his mother's comment with Steve, he stated that he was already aware of that and would later say he was deeply loved and indulged by Paul and Clara.) Many years later, Steve 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%."[[11]] 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."[11] 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[[11]]) and the family moved to ) 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."[[11] 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."[[11]]) 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."
![Home of Paul and Clara Jobs, on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California.]
Los Altos, California
Apple Computer
Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom, tended to resist authority figures, frequently misbehaved and was suspended a few times. Clara had taught him to read as a toddler, and 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."[[14]]) He frequently played pranks on others at Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View His father Paul (who was abused as a child) never reprimanded him, however, and instead blamed the school for not placing enough challenge on his brilliant son.[[11]]
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. She bribed me into learning. She would say, 'I really want you to finish this workbook. I'll give you five bucks if you finish it.' That really kindled a passion in me for learning things! I learned more that year than I think I learned in any other year in school. They wanted me to skip the next two years in grade school and go straight to junior high to learn a foreign language but my parents very wisely wouldn't let it happen."[[14]] Jobs skipped the fifth grade and transferred to the sixth grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View[[14]]where he became a "socially awkward loner."[11] Jobs "was often bullied" and gave his parents an ultimatum: they had to either take him out of Crittenden or he would drop out of school.
Notes that after Jobs was forced out of Apple, "he apologized many times over for his behavior" towards her and Lisa. She also states that Jobs "said that he never took responsibility when he should have, and that he was sorry."[[17]]) By this time, Jobs had developed a strong relationship with Lisa and when she was nine, Jobs had her name on her birth certificate changed from "Lisa Brennan" to "[Lisa Brennan-Jobs]."[[17]]( In addition, Jobs and Brennan developed a working relationship to co-parent Lisa, a change Brennan credits to the influence of his newly found biological sister, [Mona Simpson] (who worked to repair the relationship between Lisa and Jobs). Jobs found Mona after first finding his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, shortly after he left Apple.[[11]
Jobs did not contact his birth family during Clara's (his adoptive mother) lifetime, however. He would later tell his official biographer ): "I never wanted [Paul and Clara] to feel like I didn't consider them my parents, because they were totally my parents [...] I loved them so much that I never wanted them to know of my search, and I even had reporters keep it quiet when any of them found out." However, in 1986 when he was 31, Clara was diagnosed with lung cancer. He began to spend a great deal of time with her and learned more details about her background and his adoption, information that motivated him to find his biological mother. Jobs found on his birth certificate the name of the San Francisco doctor to whom Schieble had turned when she was pregnant. Although the doctor did not help Jobs while he was alive, he left a letter for Jobs to be opened upon his death. As he died soon afterwards, Jobs was given the letter which stated that "his mother had been an unmarried graduate student from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble.
Jobs only contacted Schieble after Clara died and after he received permission from his father, Paul. In addition, out of respect for Paul, he asked the media not to report on his search. Jobs stated that he was motivated to find his birth mother out of both curiosity and a need "to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me." Schieble was emotional during their first meeting (though she wasn't familiar with the history of Apple or Jobs's role in it) and told him that she had been pressured into signing the adoption papers. She said that she regretted giving him up and repeatedly apologized to him for it. Jobs and Schieble would develop a friendly relationship throughout the rest of his life and would spend Christmas togetherWhen Jobs died in 2011, Schieble was suffering from and living in a nursing home. She was not told about his death.
