And the government, or any other part of out society, doesn’t seem very good at helping unless there is active abuse, or a clearly unfit parent. We just don’t seem to have anything that will help the overwhelmed parent. Even measures like allowing homeless parents to register kids for school without proof of address, if a parent does that, will put CPS in to vulture mode, circling to wait for an excuse to take the child away but never offering real help. It seems that there should be something in between state custody, and “you are on your own”.
It’s more morally sound than the Biblical method for dealing with unruly children.
Mankind 1, God 0.
I think you’re painting with too broad a brush there. When I worked with (not for; I was a clinician working with families, all of whom were or had been homeless) Massachusetts’ CPS, this was not the case. Granted, in MA, it seems that CPS errs on the side on inaction, but still…CPS offered many, many types of assistance (help getting food and clothing; paying for recreation programs for kids; parenting classes; vouchers for public transportation so that a parent could get to work, etc) to parents and getting a child removed from the house was the last course of action, never the first. I’ve told stories here before about some of the cases I worked with where the children were in danger, but CPS would not remove them.
Anyhow, that’s a hijack, but whenever I see the **CPS is Teh Child-Snatching Evil **brand of stereotype, I feel obligated to point out that this is not always the case.
Read a little further down and you’ll see that both mother and father were accused of child neglect back in 2004 and the 16 year old daughter graduated high school early to help take care of her siblings. Clearly these people needed to learn about birth control.
Having had close friends who became foster children in this state, and a husband who worked in a home for abused children, I have tried to keep up with what they are here and that is pretty much what I see them as, and I have recent confirmation that is still very much the case. One of the reasons CPS has such an evil reputation is that legally, in many places, they are a black pit beyond any law or review of their practices–for the sake of the children, of course. Law enacted to protect against abusive parents, are used to retaliate against and harass anyone who objects to anything that they do.
I do know that here and in one neighboring state that the snatching became much less frequent when the laws were changed to make foster care a much less profitable enterprise for the state.
OK, well, clearly the variation from state to state is huge. I’d still like to caution people against assuming that CPS is the same in all states as it is in theirs (and I include myself in that caution.)
More to the OP…I wonder what sort of process is in place for people who change their minds. When I had some issues with PPD after my daughter was born, I thought that she and my husband would be better off without me. I’ve heard other women suffering from PPD say the same thing. If someone in that state dropped their child off and then recovered from the depression and changed her mind…what then?
This should work like bankruptcy. People dropping off kids should be chemically neutered for seven years. Maybe seven years per kid … yeah. Some kind of Imposed Reproductive Probation*.
*band name.
The Nebraska law allows a parent to dump a kid that’s 19 years old. By my last read of the story, 17 is the age of the oldest kid dumped to date under the law.
Last time I looked, 18 is the age of adulthood throughout the US. Would it not be easier just to kick an adult child out of the house? “Hey Junior, go join the Army or something. I can’t take care of you any more.”
Me too post. Some parents, through whatever circumstances, are just not fit to raise their children. Some started out fit, and then became unfit. Shouldn’t we be applauding those that come to that realization before their children are irrepairably damaged?
I’m actually glad to see this law enacted somewhere and people taking advantage of it. It never made any sense to me that an overwhelmed 16 year old mother of a 1 day old could drop off the baby, but the overwhelmed 16 year old mother of a six month old couldn’t do that same once the glamour wore off and she realized that feeding the baby everyday is too much work for her.
I have to believe that this sort of thing will prevent a lot of child abuse and neglect.
I agree with you. But I bet the response of the legislature will be to change the law so it won’t apply to achildren older than 1 or 2. The law will be seen as a mistake – the legislature will believe that poor “deadbeat” parents will dump thousands of kids into an overwhelmed state system.
I think we have discovered the *real reason *behind the gas shortages in the Southeast.
Hmmm… does someone have to establish residency to dump their kids off in Nebraska?
If not, I hope they have a lot of beds in their foster care system.
Will people be putting Sonny on the greyhound to Nebraska?
I think it will probably be a good thing in the long run, but I do have to wonder about adoption rules and regulations. Are people only able to give up children for adoption up to a certain age? Can you not reach a point where you are physcially, emotionally, or financially unable to be a decent parent and then put your child up for adoption through any kind of normal legal channels?
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I’m not an expert, but it doesn’t make sense for there to be an upper limit on adoption age, except maybe 18 or 21. Parents can die when their kids are any age – I can’t see why it should be illegal to adopt a 17 year old.
What this guy did – dumping the kids in a “safe zone” (btw- the desk I work at in a hospital is a designated drop-off site for infants in WI, though no one has done so) – I think is the equivalent of giving these kids up for adoption. That would probably be the expected outcome for infants left there.
And, I would have to say, Nebraska has made it a “normal legal channel” – maybe the only normal legal channel.
No, I think that would be abandoning them on a bus. They’re gonna have to do personal delivery.
OTOH, what if you drop off a teenager, who splits and gets hit by a car? How does a hospital take custody of someone who can run out the door? How does it even work if the kid runs away, and is later caught by the cops, and the parent says, “Well, I dumped him at the hospital. He ran away from them, not me”?