Posted on 01/11/2012 11:46:34 AM PST by traumer
Children are being abandoned on Greece's streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more. Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.
It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.
Athens' Ark of the World youth centre said four children, including a newborn baby, had been left on its doorstep in recent months. One mother, it said, ran away after handing over her two-year-old daughter Natasha.
Four-year-old Anna was found by a teacher clutching a note that read: 'I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her. Sorry.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Yep. People stop viewing themselves as parents, as workers responsible for supporting themselves and their families, and start viewing themselves as just another snout at the public teat. They don't have enough for themselves and their kids? Well too bad -- dump the kids and assume someone else will take care of them rather than getting off their arses and getting a job.
But who turns out a kid? A little food, a cot in the corner... Even I'm not that hard-hearted.
If I can eat, there's food for a bratling.
/johnny
Looks like they are becoming like Athens in 430 BC.
Greece is becoming Brazil.
But, don’tcha know — Europe is SO cool! Their healthcare is totally free, there are NO guns, there is NO war, a college education is FREE (for those who are selected for it by the age of 12) and nobody has to work longer than 7 hours a day. Oh, and they get a 2 hour break everyday, too.
We want to be JUST like them, because America is SO bad. We make people work waaaaay too much — and we make them PAY for their own STUFF. We’re just so MEAN!!! /SARC.
Newsies is a great film.
Then you would have killed a lot of Americans in the era before the New Deal's social safety net.
During the Great Depression, families who could not support their children usually found other family members in better circumstances who could take them in, and many families were broken up that way. There was also a common intitution called the orphanage, run by counties or private charities, that took children in from families who could not support them.
It was quite common for older children to be asked to leave if feeding them made it impossible to feed other children. Then they would take to the road and the railroad, hobo-ing from town to town looking for work.
In 1933, William Wellman directed "Wild Boys of the Road", which is the definitive film about this phenomenon. The writers grafted on a happy ending for the boy. In the real world, he would have ended up in prison, molested by some older bum on the road, or beaten to death by a railroad bull. I recommend renting or downloading the film. It's a real eye-opener.
I’m sure there are plenty of American families that would love to adopt them...
>>Looks like they are becoming like Athens in 430 BC.
Yeah, substitute Mecca for Sparta.
I'd rather read history and dry numbers than watch some '30s socialist film.
/johnny
In the depression people did the same thing here. A lot of folks had to park their kids in an orphanage until they could find work and get back on their feet. One of my mother’s best friends who I have known all my life was put in an orphanage by his mother who could not take care of him. He was sent out to a farm to live with people who basically just worked him to death and starved him until he finally ran away and was living in the streets. He told me this was very common at the time. It could happen here again.
It WILL happen here again.
Like you I am wondering if this is more of an immigrant problem - gypsies, Eastern Europeans - people who don’t have better to go back to and don’t have family in Greece who can help.
Your post made me laugh. A bratling, that is funny.
Maybe it’s time to write a modern version of Hansel and Gretel. There’s probably a good morality tale, to be told, of the socialist injustice that brought them to this point.
It’s a Disney “song and dance” movie, but very well choreographed. Ann Margret is in it. It is loosely based on the plight of the newsboys and their strike against the newspapers that wanted to cut their income.
Agreed
“The day the welfare and food stamps dry up here we will see the same thing.Many of these kids were only pay checks to their parents.....”
My granny grew up during the depression. She was the first of 8 kids. My great grand mother would never have dreamed of doing this. They were lucky however. They had a farm and the wisdom to run it.
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