bluebird of bitterness

From The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Saying no one in the country is responsible or reliable enough to serve as a legal guardian, child protective services officials from all 50 states confirmed Friday that they had found all of the nation’s adults unfit to be parents and had taken custody of approximately 80 million children.

Child welfare workers told reporters they removed all persons under the age of 18 from their unsuitable living situations and placed them under state supervision after home visits revealed that none of the 68 million parents in the United States possessed the judgment or emotional maturity necessary to raise a child.

In home after home, protective services encountered parents who consider Pop-Tarts an acceptable breakfast.

“Throughout the nation, investigations into the home environments of children failed to find a single household in which parents were serving as positive role models in any way,” said U.S. Administration for Children and Families spokesperson Lisa Young, describing how caseworkers entered homes to find kids eating food of no nutritional value and staring vacantly at the screens of tablet computers. “We soon determined American adults are utterly incapable of setting a good example when it comes to healthy habits or personal behavior.”

“The moment you meet these people, you realize they have absolutely no business being parents,” she added.

Dispatched to homes nationwide, social services representatives said they typically encountered children who were seated in front of a television for hours at a time, with their parents engaged in the very same sedentary behavior on a nearby couch and only interacting with their children to ask what they wanted from the drive-thru. Reports indicate that in some cases, that request was made while the parent stared directly into their smartphone and with no attempt at eye contact whatsoever.

According to public records, in the past week, millions of parents have faced child custody hearings, and in every case, judges ruled that the children, many of whom were so unhealthy they reportedly became winded as they climbed the steps of their local courthouse, should become wards of the state.

“The amount of time these kids were allowed to remain indoors—only leaving the house to go to school or play video games at a friend’s house—was clearly a danger to their physical well-being,” said social worker Jonathan Froman of Cook County, IL, echoing the concerns of his colleagues across the country. “And to see so many of them subsisting entirely on chicken nuggets or Easy Mac—it breaks my heart.”

“I mean, my god, they’re just kids,” added Froman.

Evidence suggests that the majority of the nation’s children were also underperforming at school, something that their apathetic home life contributed greatly to, with many parents only willing to spend a few insignificant minutes assisting their children with homework, and even the more involved ones being totally unequipped to help in any meaningful way. In addition, when asked, most parents were unable to name their child’s teacher or, at best, offered a rough approximation of a name actually from two grades prior.

“These children also struggle with temper issues, which is to be expected given the profound deficit of interpersonal skills among American parents,” Froman said, adding that it may be impossible for many children to overcome the maladaptive behaviors they have acquired from watching their parents rage at their own inability to properly assemble a bookcase, bully a waiter who failed to bring out entrees with acceptable speed, or simply bicker with each other over nothing of consequence year after year. “We’ll do our best to help them, but I don’t know if they’ll ever recover to a point where they can lead fulfilling lives as adults.”