A blog in the Huffington Post caught my eye this morning with the title, "Are Baby Boomers Sicker Than Their Parents?"

Written in reaction to an article in the Washington Post that looked at a study funded by the National Institute on Aging, it takes off toward Social Security and what effect our generation being less healthy than the previous may have on the solvency of the program.

All well and good, valid considerations for sure, but my mind drifted in another direction: Will studies like this eventually impact older parent adoptions?

We've already seen international adoptions taking an age hit with China reducing the maximum age of qualifying parents to 50. On the domestic front there are many variables, but as in the case of private adoptions, the age of potential adoptive parents is certainly a factor taken into consideration by potential birth parents and agencies.

With research now suggesting that we Boomers may not only not live as long as our predecessors, but be sicker than those then were in the intervening years, how long will it be before someone decides to draw a line in the sand that says, "no more adopting after fill-in-the-blank age? Or before people of a certain age buy the news and decide on their own that they have one foot in the grave, so best not even consider adding a child to their life at the advanced age of fill-in-that-blank-again.

Some of the reasons given for our state of reduced healthiness are the growing gap between the rich and the poor that results in the poor having to work harder to earn less and suffering the stress that goes with, and the rich ... meaning 'not poor' in this instance, as I don't see where the truly affluent are figured into the formula ... have to work harder to stay where they are and suffer the stress of that.

Diet, pollutants, a thinning of the ozone layer, hormones and such figure in, as well, as we're too fat, too sedentary, have too many toxins built up in us ... too many to breast feed, anyway ... and too likely to let ourselves be constantly harassed by cell phones and BlackBerries, all adding up to wiping out any advantage gained by a huge reduction in the numbers of smokers and billions in gym memberships.

More on this in the next post.