Reflection

Today I finished eighteen hours of mediation training. The course was informed and practical. It signifies a new direction that our director wants this office to take by engaging with parents to negotiate child support settlements that hopefully will seem fair to all parties concerned. Our administration wants to lift up that what we do is all about the children. The sentiment is nice, the reality not so much. I am fully behind involving parents in the process of determining what is best for their children, but the one flaw I am finding in this approach is the belief that all parents care. If that premise was true, there would not be a need for our services in the first place. Yes, there are parents who care for and about their children, but as a rule those are not the parents we deal with. In many cases, government’s attempt to legislate morality has resulted in nothing more than subsidized promiscuity. The more daddies the mommies can bear children with increases the monthly support. Men looking for sex without commitment hook up with women who are looking to collect and the children—always the children—suffer. So, I applaud our new focus upon the children, but I suggest that as a people we need to be examining ourselves on a much larger scale. Until we figure out a way to revere all life, to regard every human being as sacred, then those who go mindlessly poking their penises into receptive vaginae will never grasp that what we do is for the children.