I think I am OK with this.
I wish a charity or like a church orphanage became responbsible for the children.
If you are at the end of your rope, this is the best option. I don’t know if that is the case, but it is one of the reasons the safe haven laws are enacted.
Hope the kids get better than they had. Obviously, this is a family in crisis. And I pray that they can keep close to each other.
I guess Dick Van Patten was right...eight was enough.
Mixed emotions. It breaks my heart, and yet, I’d rather see this happen than have read about their murder.
As an aside, we have two empty bedrooms at my house! :O)
I’m OK with this if all the kids are Americans. They range in age from 1-17.
OK with me....providing he deposited his 2 testicles at the front door!
Would they have preferred that he harmed them in some way?
I am certain that this is much less expensive than burying any number of children and incarcerating the parents for killing them.
These clowns might want to consider Susan Smith.
Historically it is not unusual to find situations where a parent or couple has abandoned children they could not support to government authorities. These kids were terms orphans, although they weren’t technically. Charities cared for them, and in many cases exported them to other areas of the country, as in the orphan trains from New York City.
My father’s mother died when he was four years old and the oldest of three boys. It was during the depression and he could easily have been abandoned except that the extended family provided him with more than twenty sets of aunts and uncles who took turns taking in the boys until their dad remarried a few years later. Too many families don’t have that kind of support anymore and nine kids can be overwhelming to even a couple in a good situation.
I only hope the kids can be kept together.
Thank GOD he didn’t kill them. GOD HELP THEM.
I support safe haven laws for several reasons. First and foremost, it shows at least enough wisdom on the part of the parent to realize that they are unable to support their children any longer. The reasons for this are less important than the realization. Second, it shows they have the wisdom to move their children into a better situation immediately.
And while the first inclination is to suggest that such parents try to keep their children, because “there is a government program for that”, while it may be true, it ignores that loss of confidence and collapse of morale of the parent. If they felt they had the internal resources to fix things, or that the government could fix things, they would have tried that already.
There is an old medical rule of thumb that if someone thinks they are sick or have a problem, they probably do, even if it is not obvious. And a similar rule of thumb should be used in this case. If a parent does not think they can care for their children any more, the assumption should be that they can’t.
And this brings up some possibilities.
For example, the “prime homeless” are families that have been put out on the street. And most everybody sympathizes with them, because most will be able to quickly get their lives together with some support, get new jobs, find a place to live, and reintegrate with society.
But the adults having to support their kids, for a short time, makes things much, much harder. For this reason, the “safe haven” laws should have two routes: short term care in what amounts to an orphanage; and long term care in foster homes.
That is, the parents should be able to drop their kids off under a safe haven law, but on a temporary basis, until the parents can get organized and successful again. This will insure the children have a safe place to sleep, food, clothes and schooling for some months, in an institutional situation like an orphanage, while their parents get work.
The check on this will be an evaluation of the parents status once they think they can care for their children again. Only if they are determined to be economically sound will their children be returned to live with them.
The other safe haven law should be for family catastrophe. Say one or both parents are injured in an automobile accident, or are chronically or mentally ill, or have just given up and admitted to themselves that they cannot raise children.
And this would be to the foster care route used today.
Importantly, States across the US should have such laws in place ASAP, since we might be facing a serious economic downturn. For even though the parents may have to take the hit for Wall Street, it isn’t right that children have to do so as well.
Once upon a time - as late as the first part of the 20th century - many children who had living parents were brought up in orphanages because the parents simply couldn’t take care of them. I had a friend who grew up in a Catholic orphanage - she loved it and then joined the order when she was an adult!
One of the problems is that we have essentially destroyed the “orphanage” system, even though in many cases a good orphanage would be a better environment for these kids than living with their parents.
All three of our adopted children were abandoned by their birthparents, and given to the care of foreign orphanages.
I’m glad they were allowed to live and were given a second chance.
Wow, my father just used to threaten me with military school!
Those children will always remember how their father left them and never see him again. That will effects their emotional being for their rest of their lives. Many years of hurt and scar that they need to overcome. I hope they will get special counseling for the bad memories. My mother was dropped off as a baby many years ago and she is bitter about it. But she can’t control what happened to her. Good idea for the children to be safe but the same time have to deal with their emotionally for their rest of their lives.
I am OK with it as well. At least the children are safe.. and didn’t turn up inside car in a lake.