TIL You can leagally drop your baby off at the fire station in all 50 states
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.
I feel like this woold lead to confusion amongst firemen. Like they go to pull out of the firehouse to respond to a fire, but they have to stop before they start because a random baby is just there for no reason.
I could be wrong, but I doubt most firefighters even know the proceedure for “Baby randomly dropped off without a name”.
My first instinct would be to call child services. Like what else would you do?
FYI when firefighters leave on call it’s not like ALL of them leave. a team leaves.
there’s still people and trainees left behind that can handle things back at the station.
I think most fire departments are volunteer meaning that the stations are vacant unless there’s an active call.
Husband in fire/EMS.
I thought generally even volunteer FDs had a team on shift- the one in the small town i used to live in did at least. I worked with a guy for a while who couldnt work certain shifts because they were his volunteer FD shifts.
Usually he did overnights and would just sleep over at the station 3 nights a week, went with him several times to hang out and play poker, although there was a hard no beer in the station.
Sometimes he was just ‘on call’ though, and would even come to work, with the stipulation of “i can work that shift, but my radio has to stay on me at all times, and I will just be disappearing worhout warning if I get the call.”
Nah they’re made aware.
I mean, I guess a state could’ve passed the law, saying “hey, leave newborns at fire stations” and not informed the fire house, but it seems far more likely that they are informed.
But States either have designated boxes, or you hand the child over to them directly. You don’t just leave it in front of the firehouse door.
“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.
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.
Because he didn’t do Jack raising them probably
Would you have assumed the sameblack of parenting if the father had died and the mother dropped off the kids?
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.
Have you tried screaming “back back no trade back no trade back” when you drop them?
Sorry you missed the easy return window!
Most fire stations in the US have at least one person trained as a paramedic/EMT and in many places all of them have at least some medical training. Because in a lot of places fire trucks arrive, there’s people who need immediate medical help.
So they have the basic skills to keep a newborn baby alive until they can get it to a hospital. And if it’s older and healthy, they can just play with it and feed it and clean it as needed until Child Services arrives or it grows up and joins the crew.
or it grows up and joins the crew.
😳
Yes as a city dweller I take it for granted that my taxes pay for a professional fire-and-rescue service.
Other Safe Haven locations are hospitals, which makes sense, and some police stations (although I can’t imagine a worse place to leave a baby!)
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.
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