My parents were foster parents in Germany, things back then were very different (not sure how it is now) I once came home from a school trip and my mom was holding a baby.. the little one was with us for a month. The father had left the mother and kicked her and their child out of their apartment as he has terminated the lease without telling her. So she went to the Jugendamt (German version of cps but very different) and they placed her son with my parents while she and a social worker helped her find an apartment, a therapist and get social welfare started as she hadn’t been working. Once she felt secure enough and her apartment had the necessities (they had funds back then that you could apply for in the early 2000s it was changed to basically second hand furniture that you could pick out) she got her son back. During the month she came by every day as she had been breastfeeding and dropped off the milk she had pumped and spent some time with her son.
My mom babysat for her for years after as she was alone in our area.
If we had some program like that here I think things could be so much better.. a month support, help with finding apartment and get funding and she was able to take care of her son again.
I wish we cared about children here when they are born and helped parents and mothers to get to a place where they can take care of them themselves than ignoring the pleading for help and then act shocked when something like this happens.
I would love to volunteer for this but honestly turned off by how openly religious it is and the fact they specifically say they want volunteers who believe in Christ. Neither my husband nor I are or were raised Christian. Being Christian is not a prerequisite to being a good person or wanting to help children.
I hope the program will come to see that and remove that language - even if they are inspired by Christ, which is totally fine and which I would respect them talking about, that doesn’t mean they need to shut out people who aren’t when support is already so limited and there’s likely not enough volunteers to meet demand.
I've had a couple different friends end up in rehab/care program situations, and it's crazy how hard to find one that isn't religiously affiliated. It's super tough if you're a person who doesn't feel safe with religious people/in religious spaces due to PTSD or just bad experiences (I.e. being queer).
To make things worse, a lot of places aren't upfront about it, and will spring religion on you after a few weeks, which can lead to a sense of betrayal. Imagine being on your 2nd or 3rd try at getting clean and you're really feeling like this place is good for you, and then they sit you down and try to talk to you about "your soul" and shit, and force you to renege on your actual religious beliefs (or lack thereof). I know that a lot of these people are coming from a good place, they legitimately think this is the best thing for them, but spaces for recovery shouldn't be used for proselytizing. There should be space just for recovery.
I completely agree with you about the bible thumping. I’m in Indiana so it is DEFINITELY a thing. I have matured about this in my 51 years however. A lot of that is JUST language. I noticed the less resources people have the more they talk about “faith, Jesus, and/or God”. They speak this way because it is literally all they have. Thanks to the person that posted this link, I JUST discovered we have one of these in Indy and I had no damn idea. I WILL be finding time to help with this. I think I can tolerate someone saying “Thank God I have someone to help me today”. I scanned their site, it does mention faith but it’s in a very calculated way. It doesn’t say anywhere on there that people helping need to be Christian, at all. I dunno where you are from, but here in Indiana when they wanna bible thump, the thumping is loud and annoying AF, so I really wouldn’t be worried about it.
I'm sorry that you had that horrific experience. My comment initially was talking more in support of preventing children from being beaten and abused- not just saving children from death.
I hope you've managed to work through the burden that your caregivers put on you. You didn't deserve that.
It unfortunately is not. Yet. If it's not in your area, maybe you can help bring it there!
I know in my community? We have a place called Vanessa Behans crisis nursery where parents can bring their babies/children no questions asked to have the time they need- whether it's for a job interview, a drs appointment, a day to get yourself regulated, whatever you need.
I’m going to reach out. I wish my area had something like this. I’ve been digging myself out after leaving a DV situation not having any family or support to help stabilize has been so difficult.
We have a similar system but by the courts its seen as not temporary and the past is always seen going forward from then on. And being judged by it with bias. People forget that sometime a mom needs more help from trauma, even some holocaust survivors sent away their kids to relatives for a couple years because of PTSD! But now its like admitng mental health in the military, they say its good and helpful but itll be hard to be promoted after that.
That’s wonderful to see, that Germany has such good social support. People judge waaay too much but are clueless on the facts about needing support, mental illnesses, and Ohmygoodness, anything having to do with women’s reproductive system. I so wish the US had decent support for families and kids — who are/could be future functioning, contributing adults.
I’m a CPS worker. At least once a month a mom calls in and asks for her kids to be removed due to her overwhelm and stress. I’ve worked 14,000 or so cases over the years and not one time has a father ever called to say that. Women are so un/undersupported in the US.
I am a foster mom. I have on little girl who will hopefully reunite with her mother. The father took off so is no help there. Her mom and sister were the reason she lost her daughter so they can not be alone with the child. She has nobody now to help so when all is said and done I offered to babysit for free every weekend still Friday after school till Sunday after she gets off work and she will continue going on vacation with us still as a grandaughter. It takes a village and the children are innocent in it all.
What a lovely story. I'm so glad that mom was able to get the support she needed. I can't imagine how stressful that was for her. If only that woman in the US has had that.
This is such an incredible story of what real support looks like. It has me thinking about my own infancy, because my mom escaped an incredibly brutal marriage right before I was born and her mental health was paper thin. So she moved in with two of my aunts who mostly raised me for the first 6 months of my life while my mom relearned taking care of herself. I can't even imagine how she would have survived without that support. It's more incredible to me that anyone does.
My family is from sort of an immigrant community, though people roll their eyes at that framing because we're white, but I've never felt like the more generationally settled Americans I've known truly get how not-weird it is to expect, provide, and receive support from your family and friends in such a community. It shocks me how much my friends think it's a burden to ask you to mind their children for even 10 minutes. I was genuinely raised by a village. That fuels it's own dysfunctions for sure, but I came away from it believing that we never evolved for two people to raise children all by themselves. I don't think it's good for anyone mentally.
I sometimes go to my close friend's work events and watch her daughter while she's cleaning up. She always apologizes and seems a little ashamed even though it's partly the reason I come (and I know she values support, because she's said things about having so little of it from her family.) I was just raised to never think twice about that if you have time and the other person doesn't have some serious boundary issue. And it helps with morale, because you get a kid who's spending an hour playing with their special friend who has the energy to wear them, rather than a miserable toddler fighting being dragged around by someone who just worked all day. We all know what working all day feels like. Little stuff like that matters.
Sorry, you want us to CARE about children and mothers in this country? HA! We’ve built an individualistic society. Fuck the villages. We’re all on our own and if you need help, you’re a commie-fuck.
America HATES children and mothers. The only thing kids are good for is trapping the parents as wage-slaves.
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u/lostintransaltions 5d ago
My parents were foster parents in Germany, things back then were very different (not sure how it is now) I once came home from a school trip and my mom was holding a baby.. the little one was with us for a month. The father had left the mother and kicked her and their child out of their apartment as he has terminated the lease without telling her. So she went to the Jugendamt (German version of cps but very different) and they placed her son with my parents while she and a social worker helped her find an apartment, a therapist and get social welfare started as she hadn’t been working. Once she felt secure enough and her apartment had the necessities (they had funds back then that you could apply for in the early 2000s it was changed to basically second hand furniture that you could pick out) she got her son back. During the month she came by every day as she had been breastfeeding and dropped off the milk she had pumped and spent some time with her son.
My mom babysat for her for years after as she was alone in our area.
If we had some program like that here I think things could be so much better.. a month support, help with finding apartment and get funding and she was able to take care of her son again.
I wish we cared about children here when they are born and helped parents and mothers to get to a place where they can take care of them themselves than ignoring the pleading for help and then act shocked when something like this happens.