National Adoption Week – October 19, 2026

History of National Adoption Week

While different from adoption practiced today, forms of adoption have been around for a really long time. “The Code of Hammurabi,” written between 1755 B.C. to 1750 B.C., mentions the rights of adopters and the responsibilities of the adoptees in detail. Furthermore, adoption in ancient Rome was reasonably common, and also mentioned in the Codex Justanianus. These adoption practices, however, were more focused on serving political and economic interests. Abandoned children were often picked up for slavery sometimes they’d be taken in by families and raised as wards.

By the Middle Ages, there was immense importance given to bloodlines — power and property could only be passed to ‘natural-born’ heirs. In many European countries, adoption wasn’t even allowed or was made extremely difficult because it stood as a contradiction to Laws of Inheritance. Eventually, abandoned children were treated as oblates and thus required to live in monasteries — this ultimately led to institutional care for orphans.

After the American Civil War, American orphans were moved to the Eastern part of the country and indentured. The Progressive movement led to the American president Theodore Roosevelt proclaiming that the nuclear family was to be the primary caretaker of orphaned and abandoned children in 1909. The American model of adoption eventually made its way to the United Kingdom. The U.K. passed its first adoption law in 1926. Adoption is now international.