ADVICE FOR LIFE: DON'T BE BORN INTO POVERTY IN HUNGARY

The number of births in Hungary is near an all-time low. The birth rate plummeted to 8.8 per 1000 population in 2011. This year it is around 9.1/1000. The total population of the country has decreased from 10.9 million (1980-81) to 9.6 million, due mainly to awful morbidity levels, high mortailty rates, outmigration and a low birth rate.

Which makes it all the more awful that the number of newborns left / kept in hospitals after being born and living there ever since has gone up to 353 from 260 since January 2025.

When asked by the media, the minister responsible for social affairs--a 77-year-old former internal ministry driver, later a police detective, after the regime change an owner of the country's largest security companies, and a member of all of the current prime minister's earlier governments, named as the 4th most influential person in Hungary--first, shunned responsibility by snapping at the media that "we [ostensibly, the government] didn't give birth to them and didn't leave them there."

The government has repeatedly lied even about having information about the steep increase in the number of children kept in hospitals even though they are not ill. In order to receive official records, the media had to sue the government. The government lost the lawsuit.

Some of the babies spend a time period longer than A YEAR. Children show clear, unmistakeable emotional and psychotic symptoms, including self-hurting. Many of the victims are not even crying any more. Their stress hormones are as high as with crying babies but some of them have given up even signaling trouble if they fall off their bed and break their legs.

In the rest of this post, I summarize in English the main points of the documentary you find, in Magyar, here.

The problem shows a clear geographical pattern, with the poorer eastern / northeastern counties being overrepresented.

The only thing that the government has done in the matter--other than denying responsibility and lying about it with an open face--is relaxing some of the restrictions on adoption. However, that hasn't reduced the number of babies in hospitals because the problem is not just that the infants had been left in hospitals but that in many cases the state adoption agency does not allow newborns and infants to be with their parents. The crux of the problem is that approximately 120 of the 353 babies are kept in hospitals because their parents--who in many cases really love them and would be happy to take them home--are being stopped because of the parents' POVERTY. That, by the way, it is patently illegal in Hungary to separate children from their parents solely for reasons of poverty. Also, if the government is so concerned about the parents' poverty, it is the responsibility of multiple levels of municipal-to-national government to make sure that the worst excesses of poverty are eliminated.

About 120 babies could legally be up for adoption. The speed of the adoption process, and the overall level of interest among Hungarian families in adopting, even of infants, is so low that this might take several years.

At this point, the only "option" is that the children will be subject to severe psycho-somatic trauma by being kept in hospitals or state-run infant homes, after which their only option is life in an orphanage.

To get a sense of the deep cynicism of the discourse, you might want to know that the government minister insists on calling the government-run infant homes are called "palaces of miracles." Keeping with the pseudo-Christian kitsch the government pushes, the current official promise is that "these cute little lives will be living in a loving family by Christmas." The government minister also insists on "cooperation with the NGOs"--which is truly astounding, given the fact that during the last 15 YEARS this government's been in power, it produced nothing but disdain and disinterest vis-a-vis the NGO field.

Manneristic, disgusting, manipulative cr.p.

Meanwhile, the biggest political scandal of the last few months concerns a number of state-run orphanages (and juvi facilities) where both girls and boys have routinely been physically and sexually abused, including being trafficked to regular customers. As-yet undocumented rumors suggest that high ranking members of the government have abused such children. Hungary's child protection services have completely collapsed.

Under pressure, the government is _promising_ construction of a series of institutions to house these family-deprived children. Thus far, the government has opened 1 (ONE) infants' home, with two sections, for 40 babies each, in the town of Miskolc. Everyone familiar with the situation agrees that this is not a solution, just window-dressing, even in terms of sheer numbers of children, let alone the obvious emotional and psychic needs of the children to grow up in a loving, safe and secure family. That, btw, is laid out in the law in Hungary. And yet, practically everything the current government has done and NOT done in child protection has been PATENTLY ILLEGAL.

Meanwhile, to be remembered is that elections are coming up in April next year.

Also to be remembered is that Hungary is not a poor country at all. The per capita GDP is between 115% and 130% of the world mean GDP/cap, depending on method of estimation.The country is also one of the world's most globalized societies: it is between 12th and 15th in the world, from among cca. 200 countries in terms of the globalization rate. However, a very large part of the profits generated in the country are siphoned off by large, mainly EU- and US-headquartered (and increasingly, Chinese and Korean) multinational corporations that enjoy astounding tax privileges and zero restrictions on profit taking.

If that were not bad enough, there's the phenomenon of the breathtaking rise of a uniquely horrific domestic property owning high bourgeoisie. As an example, the accumulated private wealth of the prime minister's best childhood friend--a plumber by profession--stands at an estimated 5.3 BILLION EUR, almost all of which was accumulated from overpriced EU-funded projects (mainly construction) since 2010, i.e., since the current pm has been in power. The plumber is widely referred to as the Money Guy and widely considered to be a front for the prime minister and his family. He is not the only government-made billionaire in Hungary: e.g., the pm's son-in-law is coming up at record speed on the list of wealthiest Hungarians. So is his father. According to a government watchdog agency, the recently stepped-down president of the National Bank has siphoned off to himself, his son and their immediate families, an additional 1.5 BILLION EUR.