Like something out The Onion, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that parents — even those from out of state — are taking advantage of a loophole in Nebraska’s new Safe Haven law in order to drop off their teenagers. Apparently the legislature wants to close the loophole.
I’m a bit mystified. On the one hand, I understand that when you set up a law intending to protect newborns from abuse and infanticide, it is disconcerting to discover that all the ‘wrong’ people are taking advantage of your law. On the other hand, if you’ve just uncovered a serious societal problem, covering it back over hardly seems like the solution.
–> And frankly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The abuse, abandonment, and even murder by parents of older children is not exactly news. What is new, is that instead of waiting for the authorities to discover the abuse and take action after the fact, parents in Nebraska now have an option for coming forward for help before the problem reaches the danger point. I can see arguments for why the Safe Haven law is not the best mechanism for abuse-prevention of older children, but I don’t see why it is such a terrible thing. It seems to me that it is doing a valuable service.
The Journal reports that 19 children have been dropped off since the law went into place in July. Not an insignificant number [though nearly half of them apparently came from a single family – the father was feeling overwhelmed after the death of his wife – so take the total figure as not quite representative of the number of families involved], but given that the Nebraska foster care system is currently serving some 6,000 children, and the state is not reporting that the system is overloaded, this is hardly a dire emergency. It seems to me that rather calling a special session of the legislature to quick close the loophole, better to take the time to understand the situation and figure out how to best address the whole problem.
It does seem to suggest something weird about how society thinks about children of different ages and their relationship to their parents and society.
Somehow it’s okay to have a no-questions-asked way of relinquising one’s parenting rights over a newborn (partly in an attempt to avoid abuse and murder) but it’s not okay to do this with older children?
I mean, it’s certainly not desireable that any parent abandon any child, but if it’s to be allowed in some situations I don’t see why the age of the child would be the deciding factor.
You’ve got me thinking. It appears that relinquishing one’s children has gone massively out of fashion. Which, if so, is a significant cultural shift. There was an era when putting your children into someone else’s care, temporarily or indefinitely, was part of the parenting repertoire for dealing with extreme situations. Within my personal circle of acquaintance, I only know of cases where the long-term results were positive. Doesn’t mean it was only that way, just that I’m fortunate in my choice of friends of relatives.
Have a few theories as to when and why the shift took place, assuming it did. A topic for a post one of these days.