Adoption impacts everyone in the United States. According to the website Adoption Network, there are approximately 1.5 million adopted children in the United States, which is 2% of the population, or one out of 50 children. A lot of the news focuses on tragic stores — kids hurt in foster care, or who are never adopted. To clear, those stories matter. Adoption Network also reports, “Of the over 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S., 114,556 cannot be returned to their families and are waiting to be adopted. Among these children, males outnumber females, African American children are disproportionately represented, and over half are 6 years old or older.”
But it’s not all grim. Parentology readers were delighted with our National Adoption Month coverage, which spotlighted many beautiful stories of adopted families. And once we did some digging, we discovered a number of celebrities who were adopted as well — famous faces who take away the societal shame of adoption and show the beauty behind giving a child a good home.
So, with that in mind, we created a list of 30 stars who weren’t raised by their birth parents. Click through Parentology’s slideshow to find out more about your favorite celebrities who were adopted. Some of them may surprise you!
1. Steve Jobs
First up on celebrities who were adopted: the late Apple CEO. Steve Jobs’s biological father was Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Muslim. Jandali’s girlfriend at the time was Joanne Schieble, but her parents objected to their mixed relationship, resulting in Steve Jobs’ adoption at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs.