I heard about this one case where a deadbeat dad who had nine kids by four women and could support none of them was ordered by the state (in a case which was appealed and then partially upheld, I think) to not have any more children until he gets married. I may be off on the details; clarification would be appreciated.
Anyway, some of the controversy surrounding this was that it comes close to the government setting a financial standard for those who can have children and those who cannot. Of course, parental licenses were also discussed.
My question is not so much about the case itself, just the general idea. Should the government have the right to require licenses for those that want to have children? Under what conditions? Or is the ability to bring life into the world something intrinsic that no government agency should be able to take away from you?
Obviously, we can see there are many negative societal side effects to allowing people who can barely support themselves each have a litter of kids running around. What side effects might come with required licenses?
It actually seems like a decent idea, but I can see some problems coming from it. How will it be enforced? If a punishment comes with having a child without a license it could lead to women giving birth in places that are not acceptable for such an act. A whole new “black market” for unlicensed births could form. Conversely, if there were no punishment, or a small punishment, what would be the point in having the law to begin with?
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Not only no, but hell no. The decision to bring a child into the world is a matter for my wife and I to decide. No outside entity has the right to infringe upon such a personal matter. I understand you’re just asking a question but there are those who think a license is a good idea. To them I say, how dare you attempt to force yourself into a private intimate decision such as this.
How will the government enforce this license? Upon the age of 18 will all adults who aren’t eligble be forced to take some sort of birth control? What exactly qualifies someone to get this license? How will it be enforced? What will the punishment be for having a child without a license?
This opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to privacy and individual freedoms. And I don’t mean regular earth worms I mean those 2 meter ones from Australia. This is a matter the government is better to stay out of.
Marc
A few more thoughts…
The only 100% effective way to not get pregnant is abstinence. Would people unable to get a parental license also be unable to have sex? And if they were allowed to have sex with protection only, how would that be enforced? And, assuming they do only have PROTECTED sex, what if they still end up pregnant to no fault of their own? I think it is a lot to ask for a woman to carry a child for 9 months and then be forced to give it up after they give birth. And it is definitely NOT within anyone’s rights to tell her that she MUST have an abortion because she is not licensed to have a child. All in all, I do not think it can work in our society.
this topic was something i was debating over last night, and the jury’s still not completely out, but i thought i’d throw in some thoughts.
One cannot force a population to have only protected sex, but I imagine that if unprotected sex resulted in the birth of a child AND you were ruled inelligible for a license (for whatever reason - I’m not gonna touch this until I figure it out myself), the government would eventually step in when you tried to have the baby enrolled in school or taken for its shots, i.e., when it was discovered that your baby does not have a valid SSN.
This is a good point you bring up. I imagine it would be a question of whether or not you had the financial means to support said child. If it’s obvious you haven’t the means, the state might simply take the child away and put it into foster care. Once again, since this is an alternate universe I’m talking about here, that’s just a conjecture.
Perhaps licensing could work another way. Suggestions welcome.
Oh, come on. Adding legislators and policemen to your intimate moments could only make them more romantic.
This whole thing sounds like a combination of 1984 and Brave New World. Remember the required contraception in BNW? The idea that a group of people (legislators) can “know whats best” for the individual has gotten out of hand. I mean I personally object when the government says I can’t poison my body if I want to, let alone fuck when I want to (of course there’s the prostitution discussion too but that’s going on elsewhere).
What I don’t understand with the case you talk about, mccoy, is that while it sucks that the dad was leaving behind this legacy of kids, but weren’t the moms involved too? Did the dad rape them or lie about using a condom or something? These moms were also part of it. Is the argument that somehow when he fucked these women they entered into a legal contract to split the costs of the kids that might result? Do we really want to turn it into that kind of issue?
I don’t know the legal precedents involved here, so I’m sure there are some court decisions that make this kind of thing possible, but that doesn’t mean its what our government should be doing. They’re supposed to represent us, not parent us.
I honestly don’t know the specifics of the case (kinda why I tried to not make it the central issue and asked if anyone knew anything about it).
The issue I was getting at was whether or not the government has the right to tell someone they are unfit to bring children into the world if it is clear they are unable to support said children. (In this case, “clear” seems to be definable only from a financial standpoint.)
The government already has a place in raising our kids, as they reserve the right to take them away from you if you seem unable to properly care for them. I’m guessing parental licenses would allow them to kinda jump the gun on that. But whatever.
here’s the case the OP referred to.
I spent some time trying to track down news stories about a case from my city (Lansing MI) several years ago, that illustrates a similar issue (without success). the case was:
Dad: had CP, used mechanized wheelchair had severe aphasia (sp?) at any rate it was very difficult to understand what he said, had very limited control of hands, barely enough to maneuver his wheelchair controls, no fine motor skills at all.
Mom - well, let me put it this way - Dad had more motor skills, communication skills than mom.
Both were living on disability payments, had home care workers to come in daily and get them out of bed, bathed, dressed, fed, etc.
She got pregnant. Since the child was not handicapped, the state asserted that none of the home health care workers could attend to the child. The parents were physically incapable of doing so, either. (best mom could do, for example, was allow the child to rest in her lap, once some one else put her there) The state attempted to severe parental rights based on their inability to care for the child.
The final result was - they were allowed to keep the child, the state continued to refuse to pay for helpers to assist with child care, a team of volunteers came in and took care of the infant.
So, if the framer of the OP had phrased it including a line to the effect ‘and the biological parent knew they couldn’t afford a child and expected the state to come in to provide financially for the child’ would the response be different?
I’ll have to admit that when this case (the MI one) came around I had conflicting feelings. One, of course, was that the gub-ment shouldn’t tell you that you couldnt’ have children (w/o a track record of abusing them for example). the other ‘wait a minute, how dare you have children while expecting me to financially support them?’. when all was said and done though, I fell on the side of the government shouldn’t get involved in that case, since I feared there was more potential for harm from letting the state decide if individuals could financially afford kids, than there was with an occasional difficult situation like the above.
Parental license are a bad idea.
The plan would end up being a glorified eugenics scheme. Think about it. No one is going to say “you are poor, but you would make a good parent” or “you are rich, but you are selfish and mean and alcoholic and would make a poor parent”. It is going to end up boiling down to money. And what, my friends, is tied to money in America? Race and class. We will end up with whole neighborhoods forbidden from reproduction, while the rich people in the suburbs can spawn to their hearts content. There is no way to impliment this without race becomeing a major issue.
Honestly, they probably would not have given a licence to my mom. Who would have guessed that a nineteen year old barely out of high school would make an awesome parent? And my mom, despite being a single parent and having money issues, was an wonderful parent and managed to raise a daughter that is a contributing member of society. No angency would have been able to measure her maturity, love, dedication and (non-school) education.
Despite popular histeria, it does not take a lot to raise a kid. The don’t eat much, and they arn’t as consumption minded as adults (at least not until they are trained to be) People all over the Third World manage to raise kids every day! That, and there are plenty of rich people that make piss-poor parents. You’ve seen Mommy Deares, right?
One version of this scheme which I’ve heard, and which I find intriguing enough to post although I’m not convinced about it, relies on the “community” as arbiter, not the government. The idea is, if you want to have a kid, all you have to do is get 100 people (not immediate family) to agree that you would make a good parent (or, more fairly, not make a bad one). It can be anybody: colleagues, friends, congregation, fellow-hangliders, anybody. You just need 100 people saying “A kid this person raised would expect a basically good upbringing”.
Obviously, there are issues of enforcability which would be tricky to get round; but I think you could rely on people finding it easier to get approval than have a baby on the sly. The advantage of this system is that you would be judged more or less by your peers, not the rich folk in the suburbs.
So only popular people get to have children. Riiiiight.
I’d rather have to gain permission from the courts. At least the courts pay some semblance of lip service to the idea that decisions should be made fairly and on rational grounds. The system you propose preserves neither of these ideals.
What’s to stop someone from going around buying support? Like giving out bottles of liquor to homeless people in exchange for their “blessing”.
:rolleyes: Unless, of course, your peers are the rich folks in the suburbs.
Why wouldn’t people say those things?
Personally, I see a large difference between denying the right to have more kids to someone who have proven they cannot provide for them, and only giving the right to have kids to someone who can prove they can provide for them. The latter is, I think, the far more extreme of the two views.
I see nothing wrong in principle with restricting this right in extreme circumstances, but practically it would be problematic to enforce.
I understand the idea of parental licensing. I don’t agree with it, and it will never work, but I understand the frustration of seeing people creating children they have no intention of caring for.
I think there should be jail time for those who disregard their parental responsibilities(providing food, clothing, shelter, medical care). But there’s no way we force people to use contraception. And there’s no way in hell we can keep paople from having sex. Certainly not while there’s booze.
Well, define popular. People aren’t being asked whether, if couple A had kids, they’d invite the As to dinner. They’re being asked, “if couple A had kids, could those kids expect a basically decent standard of upbringing?”
Robodude, as to the “homeless votes”, I should have made it clear that “anybody” is in fact restricted to “anybody who knows you”.
Erislover so, if your peers are the rich folk in the suburbs, so are you, so what’s the problem? The point is RFIS will only pass judgement on each other, not on people they have no contact with or knowledge of.
That’s the whole point of this system: the people best able to determine your fitness to be a parent are the people you interact with daily, not the government. Courts would tend to invite witnesses and would choose those same people you interact with daily, or a court-appointed official who could only make a superficial assessment.
Anyhow, I tend to agree with spooje that it’ll never be practically possible; if it were, this would, I think, be the fairest way to manage it.
As someone who actually was licensed by my state to become a parent (I adopted), here is my two cents…
In order to adopt you must complete a homestudy and have it approved. In my state, this involved about 40 hours worth of time spent with a social worker. It involved hours and hours of filling out forms. A complete background check, including searching court records and sending fingerprints off to the FBI. A review of tax and employment records… (need I mention that all this was kind of expensive).
And you know what, none of this guarentees I am a good parent. I am, but the homestudy really can’t tell that. Just because I really wanted this child, doesn’t mean once he arrives I will love him. Just because I could parent back proper child rearing philosophy, doesn’t mean I won’t loose my temper and beat him. Just because someone looked over my marriage, doesn’t mean its strong. Just because someone looked into my finances doesn’t mean I’ll spend money on my children. Just because becoming a parent seemed like a good idea at the time, doesn’t mean I won’t run off with a co-worker, leaving no forwarding address and no means of supporting my kids.
Adoption is an extra-ordinary event, and takes some extra-ordinary due dilligence. It involves many more parties than the average conception. And few people wake up to find themselves adopting. I completely support the idea of a homestudy for adoption…but it would be impossible to apply to the more traditional family building method - and should be.
Oh, and the peer idea - horrible. If I signed the petition, would I be responsible if the situation didn’t work out? Do 100 people know me well enough to know if I’d be a good parent (we had to find three people willing to write letters)? I know a lot of people, and only a couple dozen well enough to vouch for on the parenting front. Yet, how would you say no to a friend. I suspect it would be easier for people who are casual about parenting to find 100 supporters than people who take it seriously.
This is slightly of subject, but it seems relevant.
My girlfriend was telling me that some cities pay drug addicts to go on the pill. I wasn’t able to find anything on this…does anyone know about these programs? Maybe instead of licensing fit parents, the government could pay families that are not financially able to have children to not have children. Again, just because you can afford to have a child does not mean that you will be a good parent, but it is a start. I don’t know if I would agree with such a program if it were to be put into effect…
A parenting license is impractical for numerous reasons, some of them mentioned in earlier posts, but manly it wouldn’t work because it would involves Government intervention. I would favor reducing benefits and services to parents who bring forth children they can’t afford to support. Okay, this means the kid is going to suffer for improprieties of the parents. I can live with it. Sooner of later it will sink into their thick skulls that too many kids = Life of Poverty, Hunger, and Squalor.
If couple A wants five kids and can afford to raise five kids, then I can only object to their gross overpopulation of the world. However, is couple B wants five kids but can only afford one, then it is perfectly reasonable to cut them off from any tax payer provided resources starting at kid number two. If couple B wants more kids than they can afford, then they are going to have to live with the consequences of that decision, which could ultimately, in dire circumstances, lead to the death by starvation of those extra kids.
Okay, that is my first choice; it cuts out the need for Government involvement, but not many people are willing to let little kids starve to death like I am just because their parents are poor idiots, so some other solution is necessary, lamentably one that utilizes the Government. I would still definitely cut back on the resources available, but not to the point of letting kids starve. I would also encourage and officially recommend an abortion to all women or couples are unable to meet the financial requirements of raising a child. Pro-lifers can only object if they’re willing to adopt the child and pay for its raising. If they can’t pay, they can’t object. I would also consider, depending on the details, financial payments to women living in poverty who will have an abortions or sterilization to prevent unwanted kids. It still would be far from ideal, the Government to still make a mucky job of it, but it might cut back on the number and live births.
The only way government licensing of parenting could work without inspiring dozens of “black market births” is if, for some reason, the population was unable to breed without special intervention. Since we’re so good at it that we accidentally conceive children all of the time, that isn’t going to happen.
Now, maybe if there was an island nation populated solely by women this could work. Then, they’d have to pass all sorts of tests before being allowed access to the National Sperm Bank. Of course, this ignores all of the male tourists who would be dying to visit the island…