Safe Haven Baby Boxes

[ysabetwordsmith]

India is one of several countries that allows women to relinquish unwanted infants safely and anonymously.  It would be ideal if all pregnancies were wanted ones, and if poor women had enough support to keep babies they wanted, and if aboveboard adoption were freely available to those who chose it.  Next, it would be preferable if women handed off their babies in person at a location such as a monastery or hospital.  Failing those, a Safe Haven Baby Box is greatly preferable to abandonment or infanticide, which are serious problems in places like India.  So fix what you can reach.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder how often a baby gets passed off to a trusted friend or relative who can keep their mouth shut while arrainging for adoption or heading to the police, etc.

"You're sensible and your culture doesn't have a stigma on illegitimate children, take my baby."

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Probably as often as they can find one.

Re: Well ...

[(Anonymous)]

Interestingly, in a multicultural area with a cross-cultural adoption, the families could stay in touch using the excuse of passing along cultural heritige.

[fayanora]

I don't know why, but my brain saw this a second time today and thought "What if the Fae provided boxes like these? Mortal children could be raised Fae, and nobody would have to have a child they'd wanted kidnapped and replaced."

Also, that thought led me to wonder why the Fae would steal human babies to begin with, and then I thought "Hey if they're living for hundreds or thousands of years without overrunning the planet or their realms with new Fae, maybe they've put some kind of breeding restrictions on their own species, and so the only way some Fae can have kids is by adopting human babies? It's not the same, and is more like keeping a pet because of the lifespan difference, but still..."

And now I want to use that idea in my Ravenstone series. Maybe even both ideas! Maybe witches in that world can choose to give their kids up to the Fae rather than drop them in a dumpster!

[fayanora]

Oh wow, and there could be all kinds of weird legal and social implications for humans raised by Fae, including but not limited to Fae-raised kids being discriminated against by Fae and human alike, and also humans who were really bigoted against Fae who raise these babies, and against anyone who would give up a baby to a Fae. Woooooah...

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's not the society, it's the lifespan. The shorter the lifespan, the more fertile a species is; the longer the lifespan, the less fertile.

Because so few Fey children are born, those wishing to parent have to look elsewhere. Their rate of unwanted pregnancy approaches nil -- it's like winning the lottery. Nobody gets pissed at learning they just won $10 million. On the rare occasion that someone doesn't want to raise the baby, they have the entire rest of the mound to choose from for handing it off.

Meanwhile, they humans are spurting babies everywhere. Why not not borrow a few? Some of them won't even be missed.

Re: Well ...

[fayanora]

It's not the society, it's the lifespan. The shorter the lifespan, the more fertile a species is; the longer the lifespan, the less fertile.

Even if they used to have shorter lifespans and did things to themselves to extend those lifespans? There's at least one Fae species that did this. IE, they went from a human-type lifespan to making modifications that ended up with them having such long lifespans that some of their members were alive before the sphinx in Egypt was built. The two main individuals of that species featured in the books so far, Kira at about 1000 years old, and Ah'hwy'esh at only about 300, are two of the youngest members of their species.

I ask because one of the Fae species is technically not a different species at all, but a group of humans who got lost on a Fae world and survived and thrived there. (Well, three species now I think of it, but only one of those three can still mate successfully with regular humans.) This species, called Tuunderfeerf, lives to be about 500 years. But they're basically just Homo Sapiens who became magically so acclimated to Faerie that they can never return to Earth except for short visits. While many Tuunderfeerf are from civilizations that are thousands of years old, even modern people can - under the right conditions - become Tuunderfeerf.

(The other two species evolved from humans/hominids are the Yotuns - evolved from Neanderthals, and the Aesir - evolved from ancient cro-magnon man.)

Because so few Fey children are born, those wishing to parent have to look elsewhere. Their rate of unwanted pregnancy approaches nil -- it's like winning the lottery. Nobody gets pissed at learning they just won $10 million. On the rare occasion that someone doesn't want to raise the baby, they have the entire rest of the mound to choose from for handing it off.

Aye. One of the minor plot points is that Kohana's mom spent all her money for a single night with a male of her species on the slim hope that she would have a child. It worked, but she's still poor. (Kohana and her mom are kitsune.)

Meanwhile, they humans are spurting babies everywhere. Why not borrow a few? Some of them won't even be missed.

Aye.