Dealing with the symptoms, abused and neglected children, is good - however does not provide the experience of the real world markets - which is what you lack. { Bull Dave...it's still REAL WORLD -Very real! GMAFB}

Further - I'll accept you word that you were a caring and hard working social worker, but if that is true you know you were the exception to the rule, most people working those jobs - even if they start with good intentions - become calloused and hardly work hard at it.{ My guess is that you're speaking from some experience here. You're not wrong, the system beats you down and it's hard to stay true to your ideals. I survived because I did a lot of different jobs and in the later years was not in dirrect services.}

What I'm saying is that the single biggest problem with child abuse, other than p********a, is dysfunctional families -{ We're OK up to this point...from here on you loose me....}

and further I'm saying that the single biggest cause of dysfunctional families is the explosion of single mothers, and the single biggest cause of single motherhood is the government becoming a part of the family in many ways - not the least of which is providing a financial baseline that enables it (and some would argue encourages it - like the infamous Obama commercial on cradle to grave government support).

You make a couple of bizarre assumptions here:
1. single mothers = dysfunctional family
2. Government programs cause single parenthood....you strike me as very strange
3. You also seem to be unable to get past the idea that all dysfunctional families are poor and dependent on gov. services. There re plenty of well off two parent families that are horrible parents, and plenty of poor single parents who are great parents.

As to making life harder, I would suggest that by holding people to standards in order for them to maintain government support would not make it harder for them, quite the contrary it would make them more likely to help themselves and less likely to harm others.

No Chardo, it isn't the real world, it is only a portion - a very narrow and distorted portion, of the real world. When I was on welfare and in a housing project I, too, thought it was the real world. Only after I got out in the bigger world, when I learned to do for myself what I could - and that many others are completely and totally able to fend for themselves and most government attempts to help actually hurt. That, Chardo, is the real world those of us in private industry live in.

Then you have some limited real world experience - is that what drove you into the comfort of government work? Or was it the idea that you were going to help society? If helping society was your goal, did you feel it was a failed goal inasmuch as you needed to move around to different jobs and get out of direct service to survive?

With your limited private sector experience, I wonder if you noticed there isn't much of the luxury of moving around and/or getting out of the "direct service" when uncomfortable with the situation.

{ You really don't know what your talking about..I was in human resources human resources recruiting and hiring direct services people...kind of important Dave. }

Yet, it is the private sector that makes resources available for those in government employment to provide the services they do, and that enables one to get burned out and still hold onto the job.

What personal attacks did you see. I made no such attacks. I have family that works in the same field, and I am sympathetic to those who enter the field based on the ideal of helping people - and if you read what I wrote you would see that. However, based on exactly the same thing, as well as the comments made by Chardo, I am realistic enough to know that most of those who enter this field enthused rather quickly become disabused of their ideals and learn of the futility of trying. If that reality makes you uncomfortable - or you somehow interpret that as an attack, so be it.