Licensing parenthood II

In our culture, having babies seems to many people an inalienable right. Reproductive freedom is a given. Considering that raising children is the single most important job in the world, we seem to have no qualms about allowing everyone to raise them and in any quantity they desire.

We require people to get a license in order to drive. To get the license they have to show basic competence to know and understand the rules of the road as well as the physical competence to manage a car. But to have a baby all that is required is the urge and the opportunity. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, if you like the present situation. Just ask a DHS worker.

Might it not be a good idea to require people to get a license to have a child? It’s easy to see some advantages to such a proposal. We could require people to show minimal financial ability; we could require skills training, as we do for driver’s licenses. We could require refresher courses to cover various stages in a growing child’s life.

Low intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean disqualification (except in the extremely low range). After all, half the people in the world are below average in IQ. On the other hand, any parent has to have the capacity to understand and abide by basic parenting principles. The only grounds for disqualification for a parenting license would those behaviors or qualities that render a person demonstrably unable or unwilling to provide adequate protection and supervision for a child. Current recreational drug use or excessive alcohol abuse are obvious disqualifiers, as is a history of violence or abuse of others. If future research shows other clear connections between adult behavior and mistreatment of children, such behaviors might well also become disqualifiers.

A serious problem is how to deal with the children that are born to unlicensed parents or to parents who have become disqualified. Obviously we can’t put the parents in jail because they have to care for the child. We can’t abandon the child, either. Clearly we will still need foster homes, although to a considerably lesser degree.

Perhaps a better solution is to add some chemical to the water supply, that would render all of us temporarily or permanently sterile. On receiving a license to have a child, we could be given the antidote to the sterility medication. Essentially (in principle) children would thereby only be born to those qualified to have them.

Not only could you set at least a minimum standard for competency to have and raise children, limits on numbers of children could easily be established and enforced. It’s pretty obvious that overpopulation will lead to absolute disasters in the long run.

While this sounds a little extreme, especially for those of us who object to too much government oversight, it’s our government and our oversight. The situation is plainly out of hand, and the children who are raised by incompetent, uneducated and inadequate parents are the ones who are first to be hurt. We pay the balance of the costs, so we should have some say about what we are willing to pay for.