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.
“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.
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Actually it has.....
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/triage/2008/09/father-leaves-n.html
Father leaves nine children at Nebraska hospital
Parents are abandoning teenagers at Nebraska hospitals, in a case of a well intentioned law inspiring unintended results.
Over the last two weeks, moms or dads have dropped off seven teens at hospitals in the Cornhusker state, indicating they didn’t want to care for them any more.
“They were tired of their parenting role,” according to Todd Landry of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services, quoted in USA Today.
Under a newly implemented law, Nebraska is the only state in the nation to allow parents to leave children of any age at hospitals and request they be taken care of, USA Today notes. So-called “safe haven laws” in other states were designed to protect babies and infants from parental abandonment.
The most eye-popping case in Nebraska occurred Wednesday, when a 34-year-old father deposited nine children ages 1 to 17 at Creighton University Medical Center — and then walked away.
The mother died a year and a half ago after a cerebral hemorrhage. The father, Gary Staton, told KETV-TV, a local station, “I was with her for 17 years, and then she was gone. What was I going to do? We raised them together. I didn’t think I could do it alone. I fell apart. I couldn’t take care of them.”
The Omaha World-Herald reported that the man had a “history of unemployment, eviction notices and unpaid bills – and a psychologist’s determination that he lacked common sense.”
The children’s grandmother told the World-Herald other family members planned to take care of the children, but the paper said their destination was still uncertain.
In USA Today, Landry said the children were “struggling to varying degrees with what’s happened to them.”
The World-Herald wrote that “state social service officials cautioned Thursday that leaving children at hospitals doesn’t absolve parents of their responsibilities.”
As if the events already recounted weren’t odd enough, the World-Herald said that in a separate incident, an 18 year old boy had turned himself in under the law Tuesday at a hospital in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The moral of this story appears to be that safe haven laws need to be very carefully and narrowly written to ensure they’re not abused by parents.
Making sure an unwanted baby finds a home where he or she will be healthy and cared for is one thing. Telling difficult teenagers or nine children “you’re not my responsibility any more” is another.