Society in a state of upheaval

  

Subject: Society in a state of upheaval.









Have we buried ourselves as a nation in unfounded responsibility.

Every time we switch on the television someone has a tale of woe about a service they expect to receive but isn't forth-coming.

Housing, healthcare, police protection, utilities, benefit payment coverage, the list goes on.

In my youth municipal housing to rent was plentiful. Doctors and the hospital service always adequate and respected for the work they did.  Police on top of their job and also respected. Utility services plentiful. Benefit payments, a minor cost to the exchequer and not really part of the nation’s financial architecture.

How things have changed and how the money tree is simply over burdened.

The causes are many of which a population expansion of 20 million and growing, with the startling figure of 1 in 6 being born of parents whose ethnicity is from outside the country, hasn’t helped since the cultural adjustment on both sides is often difficult and expensive.

Our schools are overburdened and many children unruly due to a multitude of reasons not least the predominance of the single parent family.  Mothers who once were proud to acknowledge their roll of being a mum and was sufficient enticement to get out of bed each morning but now seek, either through need to make ends meet or an inclination to progress in life through a  job, being a successful mom was not fulfilling enough and the roll of mother has in part been handed over to the school and the state.

The breakdown in family cohesion like splitting the atom, has caused a great deal of heat and the break up of the family, severing that sense of responsibility, particularly of the father has been traumatic. The effect on the children is only seen later, for having lacked the balance of two parents they replicate the condition themselves in various facets of insecurity, soon single parenting becomes the norm rather than the exception. Of course the circumstances which lead to being a single parent are many but to attempt to stick it out, irresponsive of the disappointment that the partnership has not been as successful  as you had hoped (although no one has any way to measure what this success means) and to put up a front, as you have to do at work with people you don’t get on with, surely for the children's sake and setting aside the abusive or violent relationship it seems too easy these days to separate.

Perhaps we all value success too highly and are not prepared to accept less, perhaps a little less the romantic fantasy of Mills and Boon and rather more the period grit of Cathrine Cookson