Oregon Legal Research Blog
Maybe it’s my bent sense of pathos and bathos, but I’ve found Nebraska’s safe haven law dilemma both incredibly heartbreaking and (darkly) humorous. The sadness is for both the parents and the children. The humor is reserved for the legislature that crafted this law with enormous Unintended Consequences. (More Nebraska abandoned-children stories here and here.)
If you either don’t have kids or if you have trouble-free kids (ha ha ha ha ha), you might not know it but, believe me, there are an awful lot of parents around the county who would love to do what these parents have been doing. Parenting is really hard and not only is it very hard to get away even for a little while, but what do you do when you have completely run out of ideas and energy and are quickly running out of love?
Yes, Oregon parents want to get away from their kids too. My most popular blog posts, in page hit numbers you might find hard to believe, are the ones on WHEN CAN I LEAVE MY KIDS ALONE! That’s right. Parent everywhere, are trying to flee their kids. They have my sympathy, and loads of it, but I’m not offering to babysit, thank you.
But parents do find solace in the best of places, their kid-ful friends and in the funny pages! If you have children, and especially teenagers, and you don’t read Zits or Stone Soup (a Eugene, Oregon resident comic!) (both with terrific Wikipedia entries here and here and collected in book form at your local library and bookstores), you laugh a lot less than do your cartoon-reading friends.