Parents Abandoning Teenagers In Nebraska

What's going on with the state of parenting in this country when people are rushing to take advantage of a loophole in a safe-haven law to abandon their own kids, some of whom are teenagers:

The mother was running out of more than patience when she abandoned her 18-year-old daughter at a hospital over the weekend under Nebraska's safe-haven law. She was also running out of time: She knew that state lawmakers would soon meet in a special session to amend the ill-fated law so that it would apply to newborns only.

"Where am I going to get help if they change the law?" said the mother, who lives in Lincoln and asked to not be identified by name to protect her adopted child.

To the state's surprise and embarrassment, more than half of the 33 children legally abandoned under the safe-haven law since it took effect in mid-July have been teenagers.

But state officials may have inadvertently made things worse with their hesitant response to the problem: The number of drop-offs has almost tripled to about three a week since Gov. Dave Heineman announced on Oct. 29 that lawmakers would rewrite the law.

With legislators set to convene on Friday, weary parents like the Lincoln mother have been racing to drop off their children while they still can.

On Thursday, authorities searched for a 17-year-old girl who fled an Omaha hospital as her mother tried to abandon her. Her 14-year-old brother was taken into state custody, health officials said.

Child welfare experts said the late deluge of drop-offs was probably inevitable. After all, they said, some date had to be picked to begin changing the law.

Ok, change the law, but that won't cover up the fact that 33 children were abandoned by their parents.....a desperate cry for help or grown adults willing to fore go the responsibility of raising their kids? Either way you'd think child advocates would be alarmed by the big picture here, in other words the likelihood that most of these abandoned kids probably came from single-parent households. I bet most were.

The liberal press won't say it, but it's common knowledge amongst conservatives that children and adolescents are affected when their parents divorce or when they're born out of wedlock. Indeed, children from single parent homes are seven times more likely to go to jail, use drugs and/or be unwed mothers or fathers. It's not to say that children of single parent can't overcome these statistics and succeed in life, just that the chances are much, much less. The best hope for kids? Being raised in a traditional household where both the mother and father are present and involved with their kids lives. With single-parent households continually on the rise, the need for traditional marriage becomes even more essential.