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Not from The Onion: The Teenage Put
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.
...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 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.
From now on I will will tell my kids, "Behave! or we're moving to Nebraska!"
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 28, 2008 at 04:46 AM in Law | Permalink
Comments
I don't know if this is such a bad thing.
I have had to many friends in really crappy situations when they were teens.
I would wait and see how it plays out before passing judgment on this one.
Posted by: cameron at Sep 28, 2008 5:48:58 AM
KFI's newswoman remarked that you used to drop unruly teens off at the Marines.
Posted by: rhhardin at Sep 28, 2008 6:07:22 AM
License to drive, 21 to drink, but babies? Anybody can just pop them out!
Posted by: Winston at Sep 28, 2008 7:32:46 AM
Some parents don't need to move to Nebraska - they kick the teenagers out (usually the violent). However, in most states the duty to support them continues until the age of majority. Unless they are in jail.
Posted by: at Sep 28, 2008 8:19:16 AM
KFI's newswoman remarked that you used to drop unruly teens off at the Marines.
My unruly teen signed himself up. Overall, the effect was salutary.
Posted by: at Sep 28, 2008 8:20:54 AM
On the upside, I bet Nebraska doesn't have a 39th trimester abortion problem.
Posted by: BoscoH at Sep 28, 2008 11:06:08 AM
"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 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.'"
No shit he lacked common sense. 9 kids in 17 years?!
But can one really lack common sense? Is that a measurable trait?
Posted by: at Sep 28, 2008 11:56:44 AM
The moral of the story is, sometimes having a second legislative house has its advantages is what the moral of the story is.
Posted by: Patrick at Sep 28, 2008 11:59:10 AM
Can teens run away to the hospital by themselves and claim to be forsaken? (an 18-year-old tried to do this, but he's not a minor, so it doesn't mean anything.)
Posted by: Douglas Knight at Sep 28, 2008 12:18:25 PM
If the economy tanks, we will all be dropping ourselves off for "free" state care.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Sep 28, 2008 12:31:45 PM
Isn't this phenomenon overall an indictment of the Nebraska child services system? If I were a Nebraskan, I would call for its immediate overhaul.
Once the state has decided to insert itself into the family under the idea that society has an abiding interest in the welfare of the next generation, then the rest follows.
In the egregious example here, where were the child services for what was obviously a family in distress? It seems the state has made the hospital the gateway to the foster care system.
At first this seems bizarre, but it may be faster and cheaper than through the expensive family court legal system, so there might actually be a rationale behind it.
It might also be argued that this more a sign of the eroding economic situation, and that the desperate are looking for any means of aid, no matter how exotic.
Posted by: at Sep 28, 2008 1:55:02 PM
I have had to many friends in really crappy situations when they were teens.
I have had too many friends who had really crappy situations when they had teens....
Posted by: at Sep 28, 2008 2:50:53 PM
if a parent is actually willing to ditch their teenager, odds are probably pretty good that the child would be better off in the hands of the state, no?
Posted by: pants at Sep 28, 2008 4:37:23 PM
if a parent is actually willing to ditch their teenager, odds are probably pretty good that the child would be better off in the hands of the state, no?
Or on their own, making their way in the world.
Posted by: at Sep 28, 2008 5:48:29 PM
RE: the post above about fathering 9 children; where's Buck v. Bell when we need it?
Posted by: Dave Richardson at Sep 28, 2008 6:22:40 PM
RE: the post above about fathering 9 children; where's Buck v. Bell when we need it?
Posted by: Dave Richardson at Sep 28, 2008 6:23:31 PM
Is this a story about unintended consequences or about tail events wagging the dog?
Posted by: themightypuck at Sep 28, 2008 7:34:38 PM
In the egregious example here, where were the child services for what was obviously a family in distress?
What is "obviously a family in distress"? Is some government psychologist supposed to audit every single family that has trouble paying bills? Or just audit every single family that has "too many" children?
Or, perhaps, we should have regular psychological audits of all families?
Unless you are going to go full-out Orwellian style government, there isn't much that child services can do. At some point sane people just have to accept that some parents are going to mess up their children's lives and there is nothing we can do about it.
It might also be argued that this more a sign of the eroding economic situation, and that the desperate are looking for any means of aid, no matter how exotic.
How many where giving away their children in the year 1900? If the lack of government aid combined with economic hardship is the problem, we should expect these kinds of social problems to be far worse in the past and be getting better and better as time goes on.
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Sep 28, 2008 10:20:54 PM
I believe it's Sarah Hrdy's Mother Nature that has a chapter about various orphan hospital laws in France and Russia and how they encouraged more people to have children they didn't want to care for.
Posted by: Noumenon at Sep 29, 2008 6:30:37 AM
At some point sane people just have to accept that some parents are going to mess up their children's lives and there is nothing we can do about it.
"Some"?
According to my teens, ALL parents mess up their children's lives. And the only thing to do about it is to let teens run the world.
To me, it seems like they already are....
Posted by: at Sep 29, 2008 8:42:55 AM
Or, perhaps, we should have regular psychological audits of all families?
Isn't that part of the bailout plan?
Posted by: at Sep 29, 2008 8:44:09 AM
Can that be done with children after they graduate from college and move back home? I.e. dropping off twentysomethings.
Posted by: kentuckyliz at Sep 30, 2008 5:12:27 PM
Can that be done with children after they graduate from college and move back home? I.e. dropping off twentysomethings.
No. It goes something like this (maybe a New Yorker cartoon?):
"I bore you, I bred you, I educated you. Now get the hell out!"
A long time ago some one told me: The happiest day of your life is the day your children are born. The second happiest day is the day they move out.
Posted by: at Oct 1, 2008 8:34:35 AM
License to drive, 21 to drink, but babies? Anybody can just pop them out!
Like your parents!
Posted by: at Oct 4, 2008 11:14:00 AM
