Here’s another sign of your times:

OMAHA — The abandonments began on Sept. 1, when a mother left her 14-year-old son in a police station here.

By Sept. 23, two more boys and one girl, ages 11 to 14, had been abandoned in hospitals in Omaha and Lincoln. Then a 15-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were left.

The biggest shock to public officials came last week, when a single father walked into an Omaha hospital and surrendered nine of his 10 children, ages 1 to 17, saying that his wife had died and he could no longer cope with the burden of raising them.

In total last month, 15 older children in Nebraska were dropped off by a beleaguered parent or custodial aunt or grandmother who said the children were unmanageable.

This, because Nebraska law intended to protect newborns instead uses the term “children” - which, you know, is kind of broad.

And while the NYT goes on to say that it spolights “a shortage of respite care, counseling and especially psychiatric services to help parents in dire need.” But there’s also this:

Some who work with troubled children add that economic conditions, like stagnant low-end wages and the epidemic of foreclosures, may make the situation worse, adding layers of worry and conflict.

For whatever reason the story of Hansel and Gretel come to mind - kids abandoned in the woods after their father’s wife worried that there wasn’t enough food to eat. Which, as Wikipedia tells us:

Because of episodes of famine, war, plague and other reasons, abandoning children in the woods to die or fend for themselves was not unknown, in particular during the crisis of the Late Middle Ages.

And now Nebraska, in 2008.