In the United States, adoption is the process of creating a legal parent–child relationship between a child and a parent who is not the child's parent by birth or a genetic parent.

Most adoptions in the US are adoptions by a step-parent. The second most common type is a foster care adoption. In those cases, the child is unable to live with the birth family, and the government is overseeing the care and adoption of the child. International adoptions involve the adoption of a child who was born outside the United States. A private adoption is an adoption that was independently arranged without the involvement of a government agency.

Between five and seven million Americans are adoptees. About 150,000 adoptions happen each year, including about 50,000 foster-care adoptions.

While most adoptions involve minor children (under the age of 18), adult adoption is also possible.

Types Adoptions in the United States may be either domestic or from another country. Domestic adoptions can be arranged either through a state agency, an adoption agency, or independently.Adopting in America: How To Adopt Within One Year, by Randall Hicks, WordSlinger Press 2005

By family members In the United States, most adoptions involve a child being adopted by a person who is married to a birth parent, or by another existing relative. Adoption by a stepmother or stepfather is called a step-parent adoption. If the child is adopted by a person who lives with, but is not married to, a birth parent, then it is called a second-parent adoption. More broadly, these may be called known-child adoptions, which includes adoption by family members, family friends, or other people previously known to the child.

Except in cases of adult adoption, step-parent adoption generally requires consent from all living, legally recognized parents. The process usually terminates the rights of the non-custodial parent. The parent whose rights are terminated will no longer need to pay child support or have any other responsibilities for the adopted child. In most, but not all US states, the child's right to inherit property after the death of the birth parent is also ended. Older children are normally expected to give their consent as well. Biological children of disabled military veterans who are adopted by non-military veteran step-parents also forfeit Chapter 35 and Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) benefits from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

Through the foster care system

The United States foster care system enables adults to care for minor children who are not able to live with their biological parents.

If a child in a U.S. governmental foster care system is not adopted or returned to the custody of their birth parents by the age of 18 years, they may age out of the system, though a majority of U.S. states have extended foster care to age 21. To help encourage the adoption of children presently in foster care, adoption exchanges were created, so the county adoption agencies around the country could have a central data base to help waiting children find homes. This allows prospective adoptive parents to not only see children waiting for adoption in their own region, but throughout the nation. The central adoption exchange is adoptuskids.org, created through a grant of the Children's Bureau, U.S. Office of Administration of Children and Families.

International adoption Prospective American adoptive parents may use international adoption (also called intercountry adoption) to adopt a child from another country. United States citizens, including U.S. citizens who have emigrated from countries they wish to adopt from, represent the majority of international adoptive parents, followed by Europeans and those from other developed nations, such as Australia. The laws of different countries vary in their willingness to allow international adoptions. Some countries, such as China, Korea and Vietnam, have very well established rules and procedures for prospective foreign adoptive parents to follow, while others, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for example, expressly forbid it. International adoptions by U.S. citizens became much more common after the Korean War, when American servicemen fathered interracial children with Korean women. Korea has been the leading country for international adoptions by Americans, followed by China and Russia.

As of 2025, the U.S. Department of State designates two accrediting agencies responsible for accreditation, approval, monitoring, and oversight of adoption service providers that provide intercountry adoption services in the United States: the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity, Inc. (IAAME) and the Center for Excellence in Adoption Services (CEAS). IAAME and CEAS each maintain a list of accredited intercountry adoption service providers.

Number of adoptions

Recent numbers , fewer than one infant out of every 200 born each year are relinquished for adoption by the birth mother. In 2019, this amounted to approximately 18,000 independent adoptions. Independent adoptions are usually arranged by attorneys and typically involve infants. Approximately 55% of all U.S. infant adoptions are completed via independent adoption. Additionally, approximately 3,000 infants were adopted from outside the U.S. In 2024, the Washington Post estimated that between 1% and 3% of under-18s are adopted.

In non-voluntary relinquishments, at any given point in time, approximately 100,000 children are eligible for adoption through the foster care system. Nearly all of these children are school-age (age 5 to 17); younger children tend to be disabled or have siblings that should be adopted as a group. The enactment of the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997 has approximately doubled the number of children adopted from foster care in the United States.

The number of adults who would like to adopt a healthy infant or toddler significantly exceeds the number of infants available for adoption.

Historical numbers Statistics from the 1940s and 1950s are unreliable, but researchers generally estimate that about 20% of the babies born to unmarried white American women were put up for adoption before the 1970s, and that this number declined steeply in the 1970s and 1980s. Black birth mothers were much less likely to be involved in adoption.

The 2000 census was the first census in which adoption statistics were collected. The estimated number of children adopted in the year 2000 was slightly over 128,000, bringing the total U.S. population of adopted children to 2,058,915. In 2008 the number of children adopted increased to nearly 136,000. (These numbers include adoption by step-parents and same-sex parents whose parental rights were not automatically recognized at birth.)

International adoptions became common in the 1950s, driven by the Korean War and much later by evangelical Christians.

International numbers The highest number of international adoptions to the United States occurred in fiscal year 2004, and has declined to a small fraction of the peak since then.

+Intercountry adoptions to the US by country and fiscal yearCountry199920042009201420192023 China4,108 7,0383,000 2,04081916 Russia4,3815,8621,586200 Guatemala1,0023,2647542900 South Korea1,9941,7131,07937016647 Ethiopia422842,275716110 Ukraine32179461052129810 Kazakhstan77835295000 Vietnam7092148103220 India472406297136241221 Colombia231285238172244200 Other countries2,3822,4862,1172,4401,160761 Total15,71922,98812,7326,4262,9711,275

Children adopted from other countries are more likely to be female, largely due to the gender difference in adoptions from China. +International adoptions in the United States by country of birth 1999 − 2014 by sex:CountryFemaleMaleTotal China 64,903 8,769 73,672 Russia 22,891 23,222 46,113 Guatemala 15,725 14,065 29,790 South Korea 7,936 11,803 19,740 Ethiopia 7,461 7,339 14,800 Ukraine 5,070 5,173 10,243 Kazakhstan 3,475 2,946 6,421 Vietnam 3,321 2,256 5,578 India 3,818 1,575 5,393 Colombia 2,238 1,855 4,093 Other countries 21,435 18,854 40,289 Total 158,271 97,858 256,132

Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs

Organizations, agencies, and facilitators Adoption agencies must be licensed by the state in which they operate. The U.S. government maintains a website, Child Welfare Information Gateway, which lists each state's licensed agencies. There are both private and public adoption agencies. Private adoption agencies often focus on infant adoptions, while public adoption agencies typically help find homes for waiting children, many of them presently in foster care and in need of a permanent loving home.ADOPTION: The Essential Guide to Adopting Quickly and Safely, by Randall Hicks, Perigee Press 2007 To assist in the adoption of waiting children, there is a U.S. government-affiliated website, AdoptUSKids.org, assisting in sharing information about these children with potential adoptive parents. Families Rising, formerly known as North American Council on Adoptable Children, provides information on financial assistance to adoptive parents (called adoption subsidies) when adopting a child with special needs.

Adoption facilitators Adoption facilitators are typically unregulated and unlicensed individuals who attempt to match children with prospective adoptive parents. In foreign countries they may provide services such as translation and transportation. Adoption facilitators are banned in a majority of U.S. states. In 2023, California became the 29th state in the U.S. to ban the use of adoption facilitators in adoptions.

Social and psychological results Because of changes in adoption over the last few decades – changes that include open adoption, gay adoption, international adoptions and trans-racial adoptions, and a focus on moving children out of the foster care system into adoptive families – adoption has had a large impact on the basic unit of society and the family. Joan Boocock Lee, an Episcopalian British-American actress married to a Jewish husband, stated that as members of an interfaith marriage the couple faced difficulty adopting in the mid-twentieth-century United States.

Some adoption research scholars have reported seven core issues to consistently be associated with the processes of adoption. Problems with loss, grief, rejection, guilt and shame, identity, intimacy, and control may, in some cases, uniquely affect each member of the adoption triad.

Trans-racial adoption