a drop in adoptions from china

For a moment, it seemed like adopting kids from China was all the rage. Not quite so much anymore. This is an interesting article on the recent decline in children adopted from China to the United States: Why Fewer Americans Are Adopting Chinese Kids.

Since 2007, under much stricter guidelines intended to limit the overwhelming number of applicants to China's adoption program, many Americans have been ruled out as potential parents. According to the U.S. State Department, international adoptions from China to the U.S. have dropped by 50 percent.

The new regulations require, among other things, that adoptive parents be married, not classified as clinically obese, under 50, not have taken antidepressant medications in the past two years, not have facial deformities and meet certain educational and economic requirements.

There's also apparently been a cultural shift in China, with more Chinese children being adopted at home. More and more and people can not only afford to adopt a child, but culturally, it's more accepted. Throw in some dramatically changing attitudes towards gender, and it's a whole new adoption game in China.

So what does that actually mean for parents in the United States? I've always been kind of curious what drove the trend of all these children adopted from China. Was it simply the fact that it was so easy, with so many children up for adoption? But now, with all these stricter regulations, will families look elsewhere? If so, where?