Baby boxes

Some countries allow the parents of an unwanted child to deposit it in a box or hatch at a building where attendants care for it and arrange for its eventual adoption.

The motivation for instituting baby boxes ('Babyklappe') is humane: the arrangement protects an abandoned child from many of the adverse effects of living with people who have no love and little regard for its life and health.

Baby boxes beat murder. And yet this way out of responsibility for rearing a child has some very undesirable consequences:

Baby boxes shift the expense of child care--the costs in time, money and energy--away from those responsible for the child: the parents. When parents avoid the consequences of their choices, they are much less likely to learn behaviors we want to cultivate in civilized societies.

Using baby boxes may burden the abandoned children with unresolved, possibly unresolvable, feelings of alienation and low self-esteem. Those lucky enough to be adopted by loving parents may stand a good chance of thriving in their societies. And yet their curiosity about who gave them life and into what circumstances they were born may dog them as long as they live. They may endure lingering psychic pain stemming from the failure ever to know their natural parents.

Moreover, the person turning over a baby to the care of a charitable organization or the state may be denying one or more people, perhaps the other parent or a family or a friend, the desired opportunity to rear the child or at least to participate in decisions affecting the future of the infant.

In the absence of a stronger community and a greater sense of the value of every human life, and in the absence of a better policy for dealing with parents who want to abandon their offspring, baby boxes are useful in keeping infants away from serious harm at one of the most vulnerable times in life. And yet the boxes are not the best solution to the problem, and a society that cannot find a better solution in time tilts ever more toward disintegration.

Reference
"Thinking inside the box", The Economist, March 10, 2012, p. 65.