This month at Caring Nannies we have been celebrating Adoption Month. November is Adoption Month and is meant for bringing awareness to children in need of homes/families and children currently in foster care.
Do you know the history behind Adoption Month? We found this article very informative from Days of the Year.
History of Adoption Month
Also called Adoption Awareness Month, it began in 1976 when Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis announced an Adoption Week to promote the need for families to adopt children in foster care. From there, then holiday became official under the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1984. A few years later, in 1995, President Clinton proclaimed that Adoption Week should be changed to a month instead of a week because of the pressing need for adoptive families to take part in adopting children. From there, President Clinton expanded the adoption process by allowing families to use the internet as a resource for adoption.
Adoption Month became a national holiday for people to take part in. Current officials and candidates generally support this effort, and since then, Adoption Month has been proven to be somewhat successful. Since 2014, roughly 50,000 children have been adopted each year with the average age being about 7 years old. However, more statistics state that while 81.5 million Americans have considered adoption, about 23,000 children age out of foster care without finding a family. While more research is still in the process as each year passes, adoption is an important decision to make in a person’s life and should always consider all of the factors at play.
Let’s work as a community to help spread awareness of this holiday through friends, family and social media to help change a child’s life forever.
Thank you to those families who are helping children in need.
Caring Nannies Team