I wrote this morning about the surprise visit of a senior Russian adoption official, Alina Levitskaya. But I wanted to come back to some of the other points made by Ms. Levitskaya in her meeting with The National Council for Adoption because I think they can help us form a clearer picture of what is, and isn't happening in Russian adoptions right now.

According to NCFA staffer Lee Allen, Ms. Levitskaya said that adoptions of Russian children by Russian families are increasing. That would be good news: As I have said before, if the incentives that Russia has put into place to increase domestic adoptions do help more Russian children to live in forever families and not in orphanages, that is something we should cheer. And Ms. Levitskaya told the NCFA that inter-country adoption needs to remain viable. That is also good news because it shows that she understands that domestic adoption alone won't find families for all the children in Russia's orphanages.

But her comments are at variance with what I've seen from another source. Jim Pettit, the consul general at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow spoke about adoption with Russia's Interfax News Agency on April 17. He said that the ranks of orphans and homeless children in Russia are growing and noted the steep drop in adoptions of Russian children by Americans in recent years. "We would welcome this development," he went on to say, referring to the slowdown in inter-county adoptions, "if more children were being adopted by Russian families, but the decrease in foreign adoptions has translated into yet more children living in institutions without families." I wrote recently about the pressures that orphanages are under because of the growing number of children they must house and the drop in supplies and donations that used to be brought in by traveling families.

One final point, Ms. Levitskaya also told the NCFA that Russian adoptive parents tend to favor the youngest children. While that is perhaps not surprising, it will hopefully help American parents to think about welcoming older children into their families.