The Failed System

Not my fault, children wail when things

go wrong, and while some of them have

reason to believe what they claim others

feel justified in shuffling their juvenile

responsibility on to the shoulders of the

adults who stood by and failed to instill

in their children values that would guide

them now and forever. The fault lines now

have turned from personal agency to that

of government agency, and it is has become 

agonizingly clear that government has 

dismally failed in its responsibility to

those who have abandoned theirs. The

frail elderly whose offspring feel no

personal obligation for their care have

been sacrificed to the vision of personal

satisfaction in life choices where it takes

two salaries to adequately compensate the

dream of having it all. A dream that mandates

women may aspire to careers and manage

the raising of a brood through the simple

expedient of farming out children to others

ill paid but trusted to care for the offspring

of others and fulfill their emotional needs

returning them to the home fires for

several hours of 'quality time' together. So

that parents, unequal to the task of caring

for their own during an emergency when

schools and day cares close are unable to

rise to the occasion, bitterly blaming the

system to which they have consigned their

elders' and their children's futures of having

abandoned their responsibilities for them

while they have been busy having it all.