I spend a lot of space in this blog writing about my family, specifically my children. I know the blog is supposed to be about Russian adoption, and I do try to tie every post into the subject, but lately it's occurred to me that I should try to be more broad in my approach to the subject at hand. Probably not everyone is as interested in my life as I seem to be.

That said, I thought I'd recap what's been happening lately in the news in regards to the subject of adoption from Russia. Here we go:

First, there's been a massive slowdown in Russian adoptions since the first part of last year. If you are in the process then you already know this. It's partially due to reaccreditation of agencies (and lack thereof) which is partially due to the negative press that Russian adoptions has recently gotten due to some widely publicized child abuse cases. It's also due to adoptive parents not doing their post-placement reports, which are required by the Russian government. For an excellent article on this subject go to this link on the about.com website. According to the writer, adoptions had slowed down by about a third, but she wrote that sometime last year. I don't know what a full survey of last year will show. You should also check out this post and this post on the adoption.com website for more information.

Next, there's the case with Yunona. Here's a link about that. I don't know what to say about this. It's obviously quite disgusting and unfortunately gives a taint to all aspects of Russian adoption, whether or not a parent or agency or child was ever involved in something so reprehensible.

Then there are the tragic cases of the abuse of children adopted from Russia that have gotten a lot of recent publicity, both here and in Russia. There's the poor little 4-year-old from New York state, whose mother cut his ear and made other threats because he couldn't recite his prayers correctly. There's Nina Hilt, age 2, who was killed by her mother last year in Wake Forest, NC. Then there's Dennis Merryman, who was 8 years old but only weighed 37 lbs. His parents starved him to death. And those are only the cases in the last year.

And that seems to be it for the news. Oh, sure, there are sweet stories here and there. Nice human interest type things, like this story about Dr. Alla Gordina, who runs and International Adoption clinic, or this one about a woman trying to adopt a second child from Russia in the face of slowdowns and other issues.

No wonder I stick to writing about my family!