History of National Adoption Month

For over two decades, National Adoption Month has been promoted and celebrated every November in communities across the country. Many national, State, and local agencies as well as foster, kinship care, and adoptive family groups help educate their communities through programs, events, and activities that aim to raise awareness about the thousands of children and youth currently in foster care who are waiting for their own permanent, loving families.

Read below to learn how National Adoption Month started and grew to what it is today.

1970
1976

Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis announced an Adoption Week to promote awareness of the need for adoptive families for children in foster care.
1980
1984

President Reagan proclaimed the first National Adoption Week.
1990
1995

President Clinton expanded the awareness week to the entire month of November.
1998

President Clinton directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a plan to expand the use of the Internet to find homes for children waiting to be adopted from foster care.
2000
2008

President Bush provides an explanation of National Adoption Month in Spanish.
2010