“The love of a family is life's greatest blessing”

The recent news about the Tennessee mother that sent her 7 year old Russian adopted son back to Moscow with a note of abandonment, is appalling to every individual with a sense of right and wrong and the logic of morals. The actions by this adoptive parent and grandparent to an alleged psychologically disturbed child is just as disconcerting as any reports about child abuse, neglect, or even worse; murder. The larger dilemma from this atrocious behavior is that an adoptive mother may have potentially jeopardized the happiness of not just one child, but of tens of thousands of orphans in Russia.



Russian officials are once again threatening to freeze foreign adoptions because of the recent behavior of a very small number of psychologically disturbed American folks who have adopted Russian children in the past 14 years and consequentially abused, neglected or murdered them. Fueling this witch hunt on foreign adoption is the immense national pride that Russia possesses. With half the population of the United States it is overwhelmed with suicide rates of 60,000 annually and more that 740,000 children without parental custody. Therefore are these freeze threats really about child welfare or about shielding a country's obstinate pride and potentially jeopardizing the future happiness of thousands of children.



The number of Russian orphans has more than doubled in the past six years, but still adoptions by foreigners in Russia is at 62%, while Russians account for only 38% of in country adoptions. The Russian family unit seems to have suffered a breakdown (not unlike many countries) and thousands of children remain abandoned every year. Of these children that call orphanages their homes, only 10-15% of them will emerge at ages 16-18 and go on to a typical existence; while more than 80% will suffer drug addiction, prostitution, jail or succumb to suicide. Many children in Russia run away from home and become vagrants or take to drugs and alcohol; only perpetuating a vicious cycle of war, poverty and social upheaval in a country plagued by the world's second highest suicide rate.



Russia's financial and social crisis is not what is widely televised on Russian or American television. The story of the tens of thousands of joyful orphans that have found forever homes in America, with American parents and American brothers and sisters, are not what dominate the press. Another mislaid chronicle is the 5,000 Russian orphans that are not adopted by would be American parents that leave orphanage care and which end up in court each year, the 6000 aged out children that turn to the streets or the 1500 that commit suicide annually; all fail to materialize on the online news circuits.



So how do Adoptive parents, which are seemingly powerless and voiceless in a foreign country, stop the recoil of American adoptions from Russia? We have a voice in our own country and we must share our beautiful heartfelt stories with the press and insist they televise these accountings. We must let Russian children living in American with their adoptive families the opportunity to speak and share their delight and triumphant fairy-tale endings. Adoption agencies and adoption advocates in America, International adoption clinics and hospitals and specialists; and our congressional leaders; find your voice. All people affected by the loving adoption community of the USA need to speak out against this injustice and rally round potential adoptive parents in their threatened foreign adoptions. Hear and speak what has been said in the past "To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons."



Russia is a beautiful country; my husband and I spent a week there and were pleasantly surprised by how courteous and accommodating the community of Yekaterinburg was. There we met our future; two beautiful twin boys 14 months old. It was the most joyous 6 days of our life and we suspect that it was theirs as well. The laughter, the memories and the tears over those 6 days will remain with us throughout our lives and we will continue to be indebted to their birth mother for giving us these precious lives.

Our home is already riddled with photos and proud grandparents are carrying wallet pictures and bragging to their friends. Showers have been planned, rooms painted and God Parents chosen. These are our children, Russian children, who will know their heritage and be taught about the beautiful country they came from that aided in finding a forever home. Please don't let our boys or any of the waiting children of so many adoptive American parents, become one of the orphan statistics in Russia. Confucius said: "To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right."