There are a few bits of news I'd like to get off my chest before I leave for my vacation, as today's post is not one I want to carry around with me for any longer than necessary.

For a lot of the past week, I've been greatly disturbed by reports of parents killing their children. From far-flung areas of the US, those who should be prepared to fling themselves in front of speeding trains or flying bullets to protect their innocent offspring have instead murdered their own children.

A Dallas suburb was the setting for the carnage Andrea Roberts created when she shot her husband and two children, 11- and 7-years old, before she shot herself.

South Carolina was where Sametta Heyward allegedly left her one- and four-year-old to die in a hot car.

A woman in California appears to have abandoned three of her newborns, two of which died before they were discovered.

You don't need to go back far in time to find other examples of more tragedies: Chris Benoit who killed his wife and son; Thomas Reilly who drowned his 5- and 6-year old daughters in the bathtub; Kevin Morrissey who shot his wife and two daughters while sitting in the car near a park.

No doubt in response to this rash of stories on the topic, in today's news a story from the Baltimore Sun looks at research on parents who kill their children.

Being born is dangerous in America, and we're not talking about the physical act of brith. An American's chances of being murdered are ten times greater during the first day after birth than any other 24-hour period of their entire lives, and the person that almost always does the killing is the mother. According to the report, in the US, at least once every three days one baby is killed within twenty-four hours of its birth; one dead newborn every 72 hours.

"A lot of [cases] we never find out about because the baby is never discovered or the woman is under 18 and it never hits the newspapers," said Cheryl Meyer, a psychologist at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and author of a book about mothers who kill their children. "It happens more frequently than we think."

The psychology of child killing is discussed at length in the article, with differences illustrated between murder by mothers and fathers and by age of the child. For example, mothers who kill tend to do it at home and keep the remains near. Fathers tend to take the children elsewhere.

Research has shown that a much lower percentage of mothers who kill newborns are psychotic than those who kill older children. But the most common type of neonaticide involves an unwanted child, he said, including children of scared teens and those who deny they are pregnant.

"They don't have any connections to the child," he [Dr. Neil S. Kaye, a Wilmington, Del., forensic psychiatrist who said he has been involved in more than 100 neonaticide cases] said. "The fetus is simply a foreign object passing through their system."

I am not going to tie these stories directly to adoption, as that is neither a straight nor true line, but I will reiterate a thought I have written about previously, that a more perfect world would be one in which more children would be adopted, not fewer.

I am also going to wonder out loud if reports like this aren't at least part of the motivation that spurs hopeful adoptive parents to sometimes go to what some consider obnoxious lengths to advertise the fact that they would give an arm or a leg ... or both, or more ... to bring a child into their home.