Strollerderby

I assume you already have children.  Offering love and care to an abandoned infant is the greatest gift they could give to that child.  It sounds to me they were moved by the plight of the child, sitting alone and uncared for in a hospital somewhere rather than in the arms of a loving caregiver. Many foster parents do just that.  They pick up abandoned newborns at the hospital everyday in this country and give them the care and attention they need to thrive.  Wanting a child and offering care to a child is not trying to "snatch up" a child.  I think your misread their intentions.  Chill out.

You have an interesting way of looking at stories like these, Jeanne. I'm not sure I would question the motives or timing of big-hearted folks who want to offer an abandoned child a home.

In some states (not North Dakota), fire stations are approved safe haven sites. Granted, the manner in which the child was delivered would probably still have prompted an investigation to find the parents. If the parents cannot be found and/or if other family members are not willing to take the child in, the baby will just be shuffled into child protective services. That is how it has to be done legally, but I think it is heartwarming that so many people would be willing to open their homes, if circumstances allowed it, to a child who had a bad start.

I have to agree with Alice and Jennifer, it's sad when everything is viewed in such a cynical light. A lot these people have been thinking and wanting another baby, and they've had kids before, so they know the amount of care a newborn needs.

There is still a lot of good in this world.

I agree with Jeanne.  I certainly understand the instinct that makes a person want to save a child in need, but I have to wonder if all of these people who are putting in requests to adopt this child will now go and adopt some other child from the US foster care system.  There are thousands of children waiting for someplace to call home and for someone to call Mom and Dad.

I am an adoptive mother whose children came to us through Foster Care.  I also work with abused and neglected children.  I will say that the rewards are tremendous, but it adopting a child, just as deciding to have add to your family through birth, is not a decision that should be entered in to lightly.

I think sometimes it is easy to get swept up in the moment and become part of a group mentality to save a child who is in extraordinary circumstances and featured on the news, but, like Jeanne said, it is not like adopting a puppy.  Another way to look at it is this.  Would you propose marriage to a perfect stranger that you saw for 1 minute on the news?  The commitment to a child is just that important a decision.  If not more so.

I think that "Laundry and Children" hit on an obvious problem that this story highlights: there is enormous demand for the relatively small number of infants that are abandoned or given up for adoption, but the same people who are so eager to open up their homes for a baby would never consider doing the same for an older child. I don't think the people who offered to adopt this baby are being particularly self-sacrificing--they want a baby! And who wouldn't? But if all the people who don't get the cutie are referred to CPS to enroll in the foster care system, that's probably the last you'll hear from them.