There is perhaps no undertaking that begins with as much hope as an adoption. It's a strong, positive emotion and that can be a good thing since getting through an adoption can sap mental and physical reserves.

Most of the time, the hope we place in the adoption process is richly rewarded. Mine comes from the joy my two Russian-born kids bring to me, even on the days when they are enacting World War III in the living room. But sometimes there is no fairytale ending. Sometimes, an adoption becomes the nightmare described in a Chicago Tribune story this past weekend.

The Trib wrote about a place called the Ranch for Kids. Located in northwest Montana, it bills itself as a place where "troubled children adopted from Russia could come for respite care and/or referral to licensed agencies for placement into a new adoptive home." It is a story worth reading, but it raises as many questions as it answers, if not more.

Disruption, dissolution, termination, re-placement--those are highly charged terms. Those parents who go on chat boards seeking advice about undoing an adoption can find themselves besieged with flamemail. I don't have, perhaps thankfully, any personal experience with dissolution. But I know from reading blogs and chat boards that there are adoptions that don't work, and parents and children who need a fresh start.

How many? That's one of the problems with the Trib's story. The writer concedes that nobody keeps statistics on dissolutions, but then goes on to assert that they are on the rise. That may be, but exactly the same point has been made before, seven years ago, in a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Trib writer says the rise now is because the children adopted in the early days of Russian adoptions are in their teenage years, and so less controllable. Plausible, but I'm not sure there's enough evidence in her anecdotes to support the theory. I'm also not sure about the writer's assertion that, "Unlike special-needs kids adopted from the U.S. foster care system, no federal subsidies exist for children from overseas." My school district, like many around the country, has a range of social and academic services for children whose needs warrant them, regardless of whether that child is bio or adopted.

The solution provided by the Ranch for Kids isn't cheap--tuition is up to $3,500 a month and, according to the Trib story, the typical stay is six months to a year. According to the newspaper, 150 children have been through the ranch's program since it began in 2004.

I'm going to close by circling back to the word hope. I'm going to hope that all orphaned children are matched with the best possible forever families and that those families are well-prepared for parenting them.

Image credit: Kevin Rosseel at Morguefile.com