Part I:
So, this morning, our fearless leader made another brilliant statement, this one about the rapidly downward-spiraling economy in which we find ourselves. Said the W:
I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.
Under normal circumstances, I would have followed this course. But these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly. There has been a widespread loss of confidence, and major sectors of America's financial system are at risk of shutting down.
How are these "not normal circumstances"? Because it's not going as he wants? This is not an issue of the free markets "not functioning properly;" it's a matter of them functioning exactly as they were meant to. It just happens not to be "proper" in the sense of not functioning as Bush had really hoped they would. This is not a matter of special circumstances of the free markets being forced to fail by some outside force-- it is a matter of years and decades of unchecked corporations being able to make reckless choices with our money, with minimal to non-existent checks. Get a clue, W.This is so ridiculous, that that's all I have to say about that.
The full text of the president's aforementioned speech
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Part II:
Most people are familiar with the laws, now existing in all 50 states, which allow new parents who are unable to care for their newborns, to drop them off-- usually within a fairly short period of time after birth, I believe in Michigan it's around a week or less-- at certain safe havens such as hospitals or fire stations, no questions asked.
But the brilliant people of Nebraska have decided to take this well-intentioned genre of laws one-- or 17-- steps further.
In the state of Nebraska, you can now drop off children of any age up to 18 at a safe haven. There have been pre-teens and teens abandoned at hospitals.
Ok, so I count this in amongst the others as a well-intentioned law, but one that I think is seriously misdirected. There are certainly many out-of-control children and teens, and many parents who are entirely unequipped to deal with them. This does not mean, however, that parents should be given a carte blanche to abandon said children en masse. The more common safe haven laws, which usually apply only to infants, provide an option for parents who were not ready to be parents, recognize that immediately, decided to have the child anyway and now don't know what to do with this baby. It prevents newborns being abandoned in dumpsters and high school bathrooms.
So what are the alternatives? There is a child welfare system, but of course no one wants it to get to the point where a child is being abused or neglected by their unfit or simply overwhelmed parent, and the law has to step in. It's not a good thing for anyone involved. But when parents are dropping off a pair of pre-teens, or a 13-year-old daughter, where are these kids to go? To an already overburdened foster care system, which I'm sure doesn't have an overabundance of foster families eager to take on older kids who were so difficult that their parents voluntarily gave them up?
While well-intentioned, this law doesn't seem nearly well enough thought out.
Said a legal analyst who was being interviewed about this law:
"I think it's time to tighten up that law a little bit, so that not just any child can be dropped off at a hospital for virtually any reason, which is what we're seeing... What's interesting about this approach is, parents can drop off teens or adolescents for a day, or a week, and then reclaim them."
This is the most absurd part of this story, the part that really makes me categorize this law among the ridiculous tales of the day.
This is going to become the new threat amongst Nebraskan parents. If you really, truly are unable to care for your child, to the point where you feel the need to bring them to a hospital and leave them-- perhaps because you fear you may hurt the child, or because you are unable to prevent the child from hurting you or others or themselves-- then it should not be a simple matter of heading to the Lost & Found and retrieving them at will. You should not be able to drop your 12-year-old off a hospital because he talked back. You should not be able to abandon your 10-year-old for a week because she wouldn't do her homework.
If this law is meant to provide respite for overwhelmed parents, it needs to come up with another method that having them abandon their children to an overwhelmed system. If it is meant to provide support for parents who can't cope, it needs instead to provide real support, education, and the resources that they need to better deal with their children. Parents are parents. We don't need to make it too easy for them to give up on their kids. I've worked with too many teens and young adults whose parents have done basically just that (safe havens or no). It is the parent's job to raise the child. We need to be supporting parents in doing so, providing them with resources and information and options so that they feel able to effectively and positively raise their kids. We should not be enabling them to turn their backs on a whim, only to pick right back up again when the fancy strikes them.
If you read the article, or watch the corresponding video, there's a mother who defends the difficulty of parenting against the children's feeling of abandonment. As if it's an either/or dichotomy. The child having behavior problems for many years may mean that the parent isn't to "blame" per se, but certainly nor does it mean that the child is to blame. And it certainly doesn't mean the child won't still feel abandoned when they are dropped off... and perhaps picked back up... and, dropped off again? It's just a sad story all around, and I'm a little disturbed at the way some of the people in these interviews speak about the difficult children involved.
CBS News story: Neb. Law Lets Parents Dump Kids of Any Age
