NAAM Day 5: National Adoption Month 2024 Presidential Proclamation

I started to write Tuesday’s blog while watching the election returns roll in. Although I expected Trump to win because that’s the American thing to do, I was cautiously hopeful that I was wrong. I wasn’t.

As a result of the election, my blogs for the next few days will be short and no doubt inadequate as I work on at least one serious piece on how Trump’s election will impact adoption, adoptee rights, and our well-being.

So, for now, instead of Trump you get Joe Biden’s National Adoption Month Proclamation.

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For the uninitiated, although they are both held in November, National Adoption Month (NAM) is different from NAAM, though they are mushed together by the media and public, and even adoption reformers. At this point, the two are so integrated that it’s difficult to tell the difference.

NAM, originally known as National Adoption Week, is a government initiative that goes back to the 1970s. In 1995 it was expanded to a month-long “event” mainly to promote the adoption of available special needs and fostered children.

It’s difficult to say exactly when without a lot of research, but at some point, NAM was co-opted and hijacked by NAAM, the hellspawn of the adoption industry that promotes adoptacratic entrepreneurship and toots its industrial- strength horn.

Exactly who needs to be made aware of adoption? Certainly, established adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents are very aware of adoption. The target then must be vulnerable women, frequently in bad economic situations, and/or with poor support systems, who need to be recruited into the welcoming door of the adoption mill which they incredulously had never heard of before. “It’s what good mothers do.”

Each year the President proclaims NAM, but not NAAM. The proclamations are pretty generic and sometimes only vary slightly from year to year

Instead of posting what I was writing on election eve, which will come in a re-written form in a couple of days, I am posting Joe Biden’s 2024 NAM proclamation here, with a few superficial comments. (Note: BIden’s 2021 Proclamation was much stronger)

I’ve bolded sections that strike me one way or the other and made comments under them.

Proclamation

Every child deserves to know the unconditional love of a permanent home. During National Adoption Month, we honor all the wonderful families that grow through adoption, we remind our foster youth and adoptees that we are right by their side, and we rededicate ourselves to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential.

No mention that reaching “full potential includes” is the right of adopted people to access their own OBCs, adoption and legal records, identity, and social and medical histories. While we believe that the restoration of adoptee rights is a state, not a federal issue, it would be nice to see a presidential nod to abolish sealed records and secret adoptions.

More than 100,000 children are in our Nation’s foster care system awaiting the adoption that could offer them familial love, a lasting home, and a stable foundation for them to grow. That is why I have called on the Congress to make the adoption tax credit fully refundable, lowering the cost of adoption and giving families and legal guardians some breathing room. I have also called on the Congress to provide housing vouchers to all 20,000 youth exiting foster care annually—a key step in helping them secure stable housing during this difficult transition. To further support kinship caregivers, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a final rule last year that requires States to provide them with the same level of financial support that other foster parents receive.

We support these provisions but fear that the in-coming Trump administration will gut them. Aren’t kids in foster care “losers” like so many other “vulnerables” in the US.

My Administration is also working to eliminate barriers LGBTQI+ families face in the adoption process and ensure LGBTQI+ foster youth grow up in safe and loving environments.

More Trump trouble ahead

And through the expanded Military Parental Leave Program, we are giving service members more time to spend with their families after a child is born, adopted, or placed in their homes for long-term foster care.

My Administration also remains committed to supporting youth who are aging out of foster care. Since the beginning of my Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded over $60 million to provide over 4,000 vouchers to foster youth, helping them secure housing as they leave the foster care system. And my Administration is working to ensure these youth can keep their SNAP benefits without work reporting requirements, easing a difficult transition period.

Watch Trump gut housing vouchers and SNAP benefits or throw it back on the states that have no way to pay for them.

We have also been working to help foster youth stay in school and graduate, make the successful transition to postsecondary education, train for jobs, pay their bills, and get their lives off to a solid start.

During National Adoption Month, we celebrate the love shared by adoptive families and professionals across our country. And we honor the millions of adoptive and kinship families who have welcomed new family members into their loving homes.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2024 as National Adoption Month. I encourage all Americans to honor this month by helping the children and youth in their communities secure their forever homes and find the love and connection that they need to thrive.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-ninth.