The headlines were variations on a theme: “Red Tape Kills Little Boy.” We’ve all read the unfathomable accounts; we’ve all gasped in horror; we’ve all bemoaned the colossal failure of “the system.” It was unconscionable that 13-month Ezekiel Mathis slipped through bureaucratic cracks and was beaten to death.
But no agency, no matter how incompetent, killed that child.
That’s because no agency is a parent. At best they’re not even good surrogates. They are cogs in a system charged with salvaging what it can. It’s outrageous that they’re so necessary.
The ultimate fault is with young mothers and their drive-by boyfriends. It has everything to do with who is allowed into a home where there are young children. This is beyond bad decision-making. This is beyond a troubled past. This is beyond the pale. Somebody murdered a defenseless child and somebody else was, in effect, an accomplice.
Put it this way. There are plenty of examples elsewhere in the animal kingdom of proper “parenting,” if you will. It’s called instinct. Looking out for your young.
We can take measures to try to make the Department of Children and Families or the Attorney General’s office more accountable where lives are at stake. Of course we should. But there will always be inherent limits to what bureaucracies can do–and undo.
Where they are at their most ineffective is where there is a blatant case of dereliction of duty as a human being.