In one scenario, it is illegal to abandon children.

In another scenario, there is an orderly process for doing so, in which the children are taken into appropriate care.

I don't know whether the first scenario is preferable, from the standpoint of protecting children from abusive and life-threatening circumstances.

place to be a young man. So they took my grandfather to Italy and put him on a boat to the US. By himself. He was 11.

He arrived speaking no English, with nothing, an illegal immigrant in a country that had no use for a Catholic farm boy who spoke an antique dialect of German. And a few years later when most of the young men in his part of the world were in graves if they were lucky and rotting on the bare earth if they weren't, he was still alive. He learned the language, he supported himself, he married an American woman, bought a house in the suburbs, and put the kids her previous American husband had abandoned through private school. They had a few more kids. He ran marathons, started a business, and eventually died a very contented and very loved old man.

His peers never had that chance.

People don't send their kids away for fun. They do it out of desperation. Criminalizing a crisis doesn't solve it.

Great thought provoking personal story by the way.

Oh, how I would love to read his autobiography.

And yes, absolutely, people don't send their kids away for fun. There are crappy parents out there for sure, but as a rule, it is a supreme sacrifice. The rest of their lives must be so scarred by the loss and the sorrow.

WW1 ended in 1918, so it's possible your grandfather could have died as a soldier (or civilian) in WW1, or as a soldier in WW2 as he would have only been nearing 40.

Not many guys in that age range survived both world wars. Awesome foresight from your great grandparents.

oh gawd, really? That's the best we can do for them?

The alternative is foster care, often not a great solution either.