A couple years ago the missus brought home a tiny young cat that was starving. We knocked on doors and it turned out that she had been abandoned when a family moved out of a rental house a few weeks before. No forwarding address, natch. When we got her shots and checked out, the vet found she was pregnant, so she was older than it seemed.

She was such an incredibly sweet cat that this NYT story doesn't surprise me at all --- when I think about how much kids cost and how rocky the relationship with teens can be, I figure that if such a cat can be abandoned, there must be scores of kids being discarded/written off all the time.

That's pretty much the way it used to be. The magical era -- say, 1945-2001 -- was a very special time in history, and the US was the most special place throughout much of that time. That era is over, and from now on we're going to find out a lot about the meaner side of life. I'm glad I'm closer to "Get off my lawn!" country than I am to the teen years.

What happened to the YMCA YWCA? What they need is three squares a day, a safe dorm to study and live in, & a bus ride to school. How sad.

I personally know and am personally involved with two of these ones. Serious problems.

The commonest central (contributing) element is family breakdown, the mother and father doing the irreconcilable thing ... replicating just what they've seen thousands of times on TV and in movies ....

I feel compassion for these children. However, most of them look like they smoke. And most look like they are smoking freshly lit cigarettes, not stubbed out smokes picked up off the ground. How can they afford this in such a desperate mode of survival?