Pretty wild! All states give you at least 30 days to dump your baby, no strings attached. Some states give you 60 days!
I feel like more people should know about this! It seems like a highly under utilized ability.
why can’t you drop it off if it’s older than a month? what if I want to drop off my 4-year-old
But, but I don’t even have a baby.
Drop by a fire station, you might be able to pick one up!
But aren’t fire stations kind of heavy?
Ah, the ol’ lemmy switcheroo!
TIL the US has free child care.
Where did you think firemen come from?
Toddlers are perfect for getting in all the small fiery caverns which the grown firemen can’t fit into.
From what height am I allowed to drop off my child?
/s
Depends. How high are you?
;-)
No it is: Hi, how are you?
What about Puerto Rico?
read the page
it says that all states, dc, and puerto rico
Reasonable. Now who’s gonna bet that some dip shit in Washington makes it illegal because “mothers should face the consequences of their decisions” or some bullshit.
Call me a cynical old bitch but when the US does something reasonable I always think “how they gonna fuck it up this time?”
Reasonable for the mother. The baby is rolling the dice.
Healthy babies are in high demand for adoption, so the odds are good, but not perfect, and its a terrible system to get stuck in, at least in my state.
And people are going to use that argument to get rid of safe haven zones.
Can you drop off your baby, once a month, for a couple of hours on a date night?
Nah, I was thinking something along the lines of the Right saying that Young mothers are abandoning their kids because “they’re selfish” or “they are avoiding responsibility” so some state passes a law that states that abandoned kids get DNA tested and traced back to their mothers so they can be forced to raise kids they can’t afford/can’t raise “to protect the family”.
The US has a track record of fucking over women and girls, what with their war against contraception, abortion, adequate child care, etc. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next move is “stop women giving kids up for adoption” under the guise of “protecting the family” or “personal responsibility” or some shit, but in reality is just a way to create cheap labour from underpaid women with a mouth to feed.
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There is something similar called “baby hatch” in Germany, but those are usually located at hospitals. Why the fire station? It makes no sense to me.
In many states fire service is also emergency medical service.
It doesn’t have to be fire stations. But they are commonly used for a few good reasons.
They’re relatively ubiquitous. It shouldn’t be hard for someone to locate a fire station. They’re almost always staffed 24/7. They’re trained on basic first aid. Quite often, they’ll even have medics on staff.
Very importantly, though, they don’t have a lot of people coming in and out of them. One of the big benefits of this program is that there are zero questions asked and it’s as anonymous as you wish. The people who use these are often afraid they’ll be judged as a failure. The lockboxes have a built-in time delay so you can leave before the station is alerted.
Fire stations are public utilities owned by local governments. Also, hospitals are regularly visited by people, whereas fire stations are more private as they mainly send out and return from dispatches.
Fire stations are more anonymous, however you can give up rights to your child at Fire Stations, Police Stations, and Hospitals (far as we know) there are even some numbers and child protection will pick them up. Reason is because they rather take the child safely than deal with well… yk
Why the fire station?
they’re staffed 24/7
Hospitals close for the night?
whic do you think there are more of, hospitals or fire stations?
Fire stations are everywhere, staffed by trustworthy people, who inevitably also have medical training. Additionally they aren’t scary like the police are.
They’re the people you call if you need help.You can surrender an infant at a hospital too, as well as a police station, but fire stations are just more frequent.
Hospitals in the US are kind of scattered, largely as a result of private equity tomfoolery. A lot of communities don’t have one nearby. But pretty much every community has at least a volunteer fire station, and I believe all firefighters are required to be trained in at least first aid, if not be fully-qualified EMTs.
ALso they are in places that arnt easily reached too, and in busy traffic area, so not safe.
They are local to every town and always have people there
*US states
You understood it anyway
*US states
Why was that clarification necessary? In what context does “all 50 states” not apply to only the US?
Because there are other countries with states, like Mexico, Brazil, and India. Do you know how many states are in each country? Neither did I, until I looked some up. Mexico has 31 states, btw, and it’s causing my brain to itch with its odd number instead of even. There are no other countries with 50 states, but I didn’t know prior and now I have useless trivia folded into my melon.
Because there are other countries with states… There are no other countries with 50 states,
Exactly. So, what was the point of the USA clarification?
Because there are other countries with states, like Mexico, Brazil, and India. Do you know how many states are in each country? Neither did I, until I looked some up. Mexico has 31 states, btw, and it’s causing my brain to itch with its odd number instead of even. There are no other countries with 50 states, but I didn’t know prior and now I have useless trivia folded into my melon.
What other country has 50 states?
none, but people don’t tend to know that
I don’t know
So if an article refered to ‘in the 36 states’ would you what country theyre talking about off the top of your head?
answer
Nigeria is the only country with exactly 36 states
There are plenty of complains of the web being US-centric, that i think its perfectly fair to state, and not expect everyone from every country to know how many states, just because its America.
Okay, but if your country doesn’t have 50 states exactly, then you know it doesn’t apply to your country and can skip this.
Nigeria, obviously
I know! Nigeria!
A while back I fell into the rabbit hole of people dropping off the baby without informing the other parent. turns out it’s really hard to get the kid back
Omg, that is insane! Imagine coming home from work like
“Honey, I dropped the baby off at the fire station today and the fireman yelled ‘BACK BACK NO TRADE BACK’ when I handed it over, so I’m pretty sure the decision is final. I hope you weren’t too attached to the babe.”
“I dropped Billy off for camp at the fire station. What do you mean thats next week?”
What about a 956 month old toddler?
C’mon! I’ll be good now! I promise!
I’m sure as soon as that toddler goes into a fire, the orange will just disappear into the orange, and that will be that.
At least, one can hope.
They probably wont fit through the slot.
I think at that age, you just send them through the front door and call them a volunteer.
I’d be completely comfortable with doing whatever is necessary to make him fit through the slot, except for augmenting the slot in any way.
Couldn’t hurt to try… sounds very old tho TBH. Have you tried a retirement home?
That’s functionally what the US congress is … so yes?
We keep hoping, but he keeps throwing press conferences.
Nebraska had no age limit for a bit. Guy dropped off 9 of his 10 kids(1 was 18) cause he felt overwhelmed after his wife died a year earlier.
“I think there’s a misperception that we just inadvertently left an age cap out. But the reality was we wanted to save lives of older kids who might be at risk,” said Amanda McGill Johnson, a Nebraska state senator at the time.
That actually kind of makes sense? I mean, dropping off teens is excessive, but maybe it highlights an issue? Overwhelmed parents of teenagers isn’t something I had on my list of people that need more help, at least.
That is surprisingly kind for a Nebraskan legislator. Isn’t NE one of the states where they’d rather let women die than abort a fetus?
No, they’d rather let the mother die and get a free child prostitute out of her than to abort a fetus.
I’m more concerned how he had ten kids and then felt overwhelmed when his wife left him. Like what the fuck?!
Grieving for a partner definitely doesn’t make it easier to raise your children?!
And I’ve not met many men with 10 kids who are super into doing the whole “dividing the labor of parenting evenly” thing, and I went to catholic schools, I knew some big families. And even if he had been the type to do that, you aren’t winding up being the breadwinner for a family with 10 kids and having both low stress finances and a low stress job. So adding in lots of extra home duties and possibly reduced financial capabilities and mourning will probably wreck you.
That said, I’ve never met a family that large where the parents kept actually parenting beyond number 3 or 4. Some of the most horrifically parentified people I ever met were middle daughters of large families. Also the kids are struggling too, and each of them is likely to have taken some lasting psychic damage from being abandoned by their dad, even temporarily, shortly after their mom died.
Died, not left.
And likely yeah, someone would get overwhelmed doing two peoples’ jobs.
Because he didn’t do Jack raising them probably
Or doubling the responsibilities was too much.
Double it and pass it to the next person
If doubling was to much, it would have been enough to “only” drop 4-5
As long as we are doing hypothetical, he may have been working long hours to pay for all the costs while she was stay at home. When she died, working all the time and trying to care for kids and grieving is going to be massively stressful. Bot to mention the aunt for 7 of the kids decided to have a custody battle so lots and lots of possible things leading to being overwhelmed.
But you clearly assume he is a deadbeat because he’s a man. Have fun with that.
What has him being a man to do with all that
Because he didn’t do Jack raising them probably
Would you have assumed the same lack of parenting if the father had died and the mother dropped off the kids?
10 kids jfc
I guess it highlights why there should be no age limit… the response to introduce an age limit of 30 days certainly is not the right one.
Wtf! That is insane 🤣 good read!
Yeah this directly came out of people abandoning babies in all sorts of place. Some places have these nest type of boxes all padded and temperature controlled where people can leave babies. This is the type of good thing I could see today republicans rallying to stop.
Before fire stations, churches and monasteries did the same thing. And like how some fire stations have a dedicated baby drop box, the churches and monasteries sometimes did, too.
now that is wild.
All 50 states of what?
It starts solid, but then there liquid, gaseous…. Scientists will need to help me with the 47 others here…
Plasma
Bose Einstein Condensate
I mean, there’s like ~22 phases for ice alone.
Ice-nine when?
Right after ice-eight, ofc
The US is simply where the highest number of anglophones reside. You’d have to sum up the next three nations to get more English speakers than the US (according to worldatlas.com).
Assuming an English speaker on the internet is American is still rude, but not exactly a bad guess - and hardly chauvinism imo
Anglophone is an incorrect metric.
There are more non native English speakers than native English speakers.
On English websites and communities there is no difference between those two as long as the website or community is not specifically for that purpose.
Most people on Lemmy do not live in the US.
Again, and I’ve tried to be very clear about this, I’m not saying they’re correct. We agree that it’s a mistake. I’m explaining how it is an easy mistake to make.
This is a frustrating conversation.
For a while, I was trying to start all my comments with things like 'to add… ’ or, ‘just to clarify…’ if I was agreeing but context pr more info or whatever
etc since it seems like the default is to assume any response to a comment is conflict / disagreement.
May be time to bring that back
Some people are just influenced by the evil of Giygas, always on the attack. It’s not my job to hit them with a frying pan.
This is a frustrating conversation.
I feel this, deep in my bones, upon reading it.
I found this little cozy spot. I’m gonna curl up in a post right here. *spins 3 times and plops down
Around 1½ billion people in the world know English, less than ¼ of them live in the US.
I’d bet about 10% of them live in India alone! It’s been my experience that when people think about the global populace as a whole they don’t give India nearly as much weight as it warrants XD
Don’t do numbers at me, if a quarter of the roulette wheel says USA we both know where you’re putting your money.
Again, nobody said it was clean thinking or appropriate to pre-judge, only that you can easily see how the mistake gets made without ever calling it chauvinism.
[…], only that you can easily see how the mistake gets made without ever calling it chauvinism.
This is the point where I strongly disagree with you, constantly mistaking less than ¼ for being the most likely is not easily made, there’s a good reason for why the expression US Defaultism exists, because a particular mindset is required for such a mistake to be easily made.
~25% is a lot when you’re talking about demographics that large. It’s saying that there’s a 1 in 4 chance of any English speaker you encounter being from the US vs every other country in the world.
If you’re looking at native English speakers, it’s about 63%.
But that’s not the point, the point is that more than 3 out of 4 people able to read this post don’t live in the US.
Matter
50 states of gray
For people with a real punishment fetish
Micronesia
Uh, the 50 states of our country? Surely you learned about them in elementary school.
Consciousness
It’s clear if you click the link - the article will tell you if your inference skills fail you!
