OK, I have to admit it: I have never been comfortable with the first sentence of Anna Karenina.

"Happy families are all alike," reads my translation, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Other translations render the first sentence as "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.")

Wiktionary, the dictionary affiliate of Wikipedia, defines "happy" thus: "Favored by hap, luck, or fortune; lucky; fortunate; successful; prosperous; satisfying desire." Its primary definition of "unhappy" is "not happy; sad.".

Many of us who adopt children from Russia learn, or will come to learn, that our children come from families that could fit that definition of unhappy. They have not been fortunate, successful or prosperous, even by Russian standards. But is each really unhappy in a way different from the others? We adoptive parents are often fortunate, successful and prosperous. But are we all alike? (What am I doing writing about Anna Karenina in a blog about Russian adoption? Read here.)

We spend, in America, a huge amount of time dissecting unhappy families. Daytime television programming couldn't exist without them, whether in its ostensibly real incarnation in talk shows like Jerry Springer or its fictionalized version on the soap operas. We know that the members of the families these shows present are petty, vindictive, self-centered, and a long list of other negative adjectives. But if they were all alike, would there be anything to watch? And are happy families really alike or do they just seem so because we (Stephen Covey notwithstanding) spend so little time trying to understand what makes them tick? The first issue of the new Conde Nast magazine, Portfolio, contains a story on what happened to the daughter of Ivan Boesky after he was convicted of insider trading in 1986. His family went from being successful and prosperous to busted. Once happy, then unhappy, but all the same family.

Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, as he was born, seems to have been the patriarch of a happy family at the time he wrote Anna Karenina. In later years his family split into bitter camps, as he changed his religious views and renounced his wealth. Would Anna Karenina have been the same had he written it in his later years? We can only guess.