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.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Licensing parenthood I
Many of the human race are poor or terrible parents. Bad parents raise screwed-up kids who become screwed-up adults faster than the rest of us can therapize, teach or coerce them into a semblance of civilization.
In the last 4000 years or so during which civilization in roughly the modern form has existed, we apparently AS A GROUP have learned nothing. Individuals have become highly skilled as parents and teachers and therapists, but as a whole, we have not improved at all. We teach rage and greed and selfishness and religious bigotry; we raise criminals and killers and rapists and child abusers. We sow the wind; we reap the whirlwind. The human race, in spite of the knowledge of individuals, has chosen to remain on the first rung of parenting skills, if that. And even if we don’t know as much about positive skills in parenting as we should, we certainly know a lot of things that are flatly wrong and damaging.
I see people in my office whose parents started them on drugs or alcohol or sex before the children even knew what they were. Every day we see in the papers articles about children who were savagely beaten or killed by their parents. Girls are pimped out on the street at 10 or 12 to provide money for their parents’ drug use. These situations are, unfortunately, common; but what doesn’t often make the front page of the paper are the many instances of casual verbal and physical violence that don’t come to the attention of the authorities. The amount of psychological damage that ensues is impossible to measure.
Some young women pop out babies just to have money from DHS (Welfare, in Oklahoma); DHS pays out the money but has inadequate resources to insure adequate skills in the parents. People don't even have to know what causes babies to feel free to have them. Some young men think it is a mark of their "manhood" to father children they have no intention of helping raise. I recently saw a 20+ male wearing a lot of "bling" (real gold jewelry) who was proud of fathering 7 (at least) children whom he had seen once or twice and whom he had absolutely no intention of helping raise or support.
I'm quite sure that 3000 (or 30,000) years ago the situation was not significantly different. Perhaps the human race long ago was benefited by sheer numbers of people, regardless of quality. And that's the point: no matter what advances in science or psychology of parenting we make, we are not using them any more to raise our children than in our primitive pasts. We have increasing quantity and apparently decreasing quality.
The place to stop bad parenting is before bad or inadequate people become parents. We need to license and limit the production of babies. We need to stop human animals from breeding until they stop being animals.
In the last 4000 years or so during which civilization in roughly the modern form has existed, we apparently AS A GROUP have learned nothing. Individuals have become highly skilled as parents and teachers and therapists, but as a whole, we have not improved at all. We teach rage and greed and selfishness and religious bigotry; we raise criminals and killers and rapists and child abusers. We sow the wind; we reap the whirlwind. The human race, in spite of the knowledge of individuals, has chosen to remain on the first rung of parenting skills, if that. And even if we don’t know as much about positive skills in parenting as we should, we certainly know a lot of things that are flatly wrong and damaging.
I see people in my office whose parents started them on drugs or alcohol or sex before the children even knew what they were. Every day we see in the papers articles about children who were savagely beaten or killed by their parents. Girls are pimped out on the street at 10 or 12 to provide money for their parents’ drug use. These situations are, unfortunately, common; but what doesn’t often make the front page of the paper are the many instances of casual verbal and physical violence that don’t come to the attention of the authorities. The amount of psychological damage that ensues is impossible to measure.
Some young women pop out babies just to have money from DHS (Welfare, in Oklahoma); DHS pays out the money but has inadequate resources to insure adequate skills in the parents. People don't even have to know what causes babies to feel free to have them. Some young men think it is a mark of their "manhood" to father children they have no intention of helping raise. I recently saw a 20+ male wearing a lot of "bling" (real gold jewelry) who was proud of fathering 7 (at least) children whom he had seen once or twice and whom he had absolutely no intention of helping raise or support.
I'm quite sure that 3000 (or 30,000) years ago the situation was not significantly different. Perhaps the human race long ago was benefited by sheer numbers of people, regardless of quality. And that's the point: no matter what advances in science or psychology of parenting we make, we are not using them any more to raise our children than in our primitive pasts. We have increasing quantity and apparently decreasing quality.
The place to stop bad parenting is before bad or inadequate people become parents. We need to license and limit the production of babies. We need to stop human animals from breeding until they stop being animals.
Friday, August 07, 2009
What Jesus Did Wrong
There are essentially only two approaches to presenting a new set of moral values or ethics. The Preacher can go out into the populace and present his/her ideas. The masses may not know anythng about the new ideas, and their interest in them, at least at first, is likely to be minimal or negative. OR the Preacher can stay in his/her place, become a Teacher, and wait for the interested people to come to him/her.
In the first instance, the Preacher reaches a larger number of people quickly, but attracts negative attention as well as positive. The short-range outcome will almost certainly involve conflict. The Preacher's approach is an aggressive one, which tends to create tension.
In the second instance, the Teacher's ideas may spread very slowly, among those who are already pre-disposed to react positively. This low-profile approach rarely involves much conflict. The Teacher is essentially passive as regards the promulgation of his/her ideas.
Jesus was a good example of the first approach. The conflicts he created by aggressively presenting his controversial ideas fulminated into an outburst, resulting in crucifixion. Siddhartha Gautama was a good example of the second approach. He lived a long and effective life, dying in advanced old age of natural causes, and loved by all.
It's interesting to speculate about the possible outcome had each of these two exemplars taken the alternative approach.
In the first instance, the Preacher reaches a larger number of people quickly, but attracts negative attention as well as positive. The short-range outcome will almost certainly involve conflict. The Preacher's approach is an aggressive one, which tends to create tension.
In the second instance, the Teacher's ideas may spread very slowly, among those who are already pre-disposed to react positively. This low-profile approach rarely involves much conflict. The Teacher is essentially passive as regards the promulgation of his/her ideas.
Jesus was a good example of the first approach. The conflicts he created by aggressively presenting his controversial ideas fulminated into an outburst, resulting in crucifixion. Siddhartha Gautama was a good example of the second approach. He lived a long and effective life, dying in advanced old age of natural causes, and loved by all.
It's interesting to speculate about the possible outcome had each of these two exemplars taken the alternative approach.
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