I’ve always called parenting as the last bastion of freedom.
Here me out for a minute.
In almost everything else you do in life, there are requirements, licenses, certifications,
surveillance, monitoring, tracking, record keeping, evaluating, testing, etc.
If you want to drive a car, you need to get a license.
If you want to get a job, you need to have certification or take testing/examination to pass.
If you want to travel, you need to show documentation, require a passport/visa/health check etc.
If you want to work in some jobs, you need to have a criminal background check.
If you want to get married, you have to register with the government.
If you want to take out a loan at the bank, you need to meet some requirements.
So on and so forth.
But parenting, probably the most important job or task any human can have in their life, has no requirements, no license/certification/training required. Anyone and everyone is allowed to be a parent at almost anytime of their lives with no checks, no exams, no evaluations, no rules, no monitoring.
Of course, parenting is a very diverse thing. There is no such thing as only one way to parent and the right way to parent. It sort of varies on all kinds of situations and circumstances. I just found it interesting that in the times we are living in and heading towards where everything is being tracked and everyone is being monitored, parenting is still complete freedom. You can basically parent any way that you want. Of course there are laws and you can’t break those laws else run into trouble possibly losing custody of your child or going to jail yourself. But that’s only at the extreme end. For everything else, you are pretty much free to do as you please and nobody can tell you that you are not qualified to be a parent. People can say you are a bad parent or criticize you, but they can’t do anything about your parenting style. It’s not against the law to be a bad parent (ie. spend little time with your kids, not teaching them lesson in life, not having talks with them to work out emotional issues, not going on family vacations or buying them presents now and then, not teaching them how to cook or do things around the house, skills, tasks, not playing baseball with your son, etc).
Yes, some people by choice install their own CCTVs inside their homes for their own security so I suppose somebody could monitor how you parent on a daily basis if they were allowed to collect all your videos and stitch together years and years of your parenting.
But basically you are free to parent as you choose. There is no “parent police” patrolling the houses checking up on you to see if you are following all the ordinances and bylaws of parenting. There is no surprise examination or mandatory parenting seminars annually to update your certification or license to parent legally haha. None of that exists. You are free to be a 1 star parent or a 3.5 star parent or 5 star parent. It’s not illegal to be a 1 star parent. It’s only illegal if you actually break a law such as the things we often hear about on the news (abuse, negligence, sexual crime, actual manslaughter or murder, kidnapping etc).
I’m certainly not advocating for there to be parenting licenses. I’m not hoping for there to be parent police to patrol your houses and come in and watch you to make sure you pass the grade. I like it the way it is. It’s one of the last bastion of freedom where you don’t have anyone breathing down your neck and grading you worrying that you might be let go any day now.
But I just thought it’s so interesting that parenting has nothing while almost everything else has competency tests, licensing, certification required. The only thing required in parenting is that you aren’t a criminal. That’s it. Outside of that, you can be whatever you want and do whatever you want as a parent.
Anyone else realize this about parenting?