And I explained the things that you’re overlooking, and why. I notice that you did not bother to address the points that I made.
Actually, there are lots of things nowadays that are much more free than they used to be. You can marry whichever sufficiently-distantly-related single consenting adult you want, for example, whereas the government used to let you marry only someone of the opposite sex.
You can attend a public school without teachers making you say prayers every day.
You can get elected to public office even if you’ve been divorced or had a child out of wedlock or an extramarital affair, or are gay. In the past, the social stigma associated with personal relationship history could permanently wreck a candidate. Remember the 1964 movie The Best Man where one presidential-nomination candidate was unelectable because of his adultery and another would have been torpedoed by allegations of past homosexual activity if the first candidate had chosen to make them?
Furthermore, as glee and Bootb have noted, most of the “unfree” restrictions you’re lamenting are either not government-imposed, or not new, or both:
All these things have been true for at least the past hundred years. And as I pointed out above, thanks to ongoing efforts in defense of civil liberties, many of those activities are in fact less stringently constrained than they used to be.
And without having to pass a test.
We want good government. But not too much of it. People do not have to be perfect parents. They have to be “good enough” parents. This means being loving, avoiding mean behaviours, providing basic things and trying to learn and adapt. It is hard to parent really well, perhaps, but it is not that difficult to be a “good enough” parent. Billions have done it. What do you think extra bureaucracy would add? Most children worldwide go to school and receive important vaccinations. Most parents want their children to succeed and make considerable sacrifices for this reason.
And of the ‘correct’ race in some states until as late as 1967 when the Supreme Court ruled Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional.
American babies have to have Social Security numbers to be claimed on their parents’ tax returns, that I do know.
And, to be honest, probably the only effective reason that there are no official requirements for being a parent is that the government is (mostly, nowadays) not allowed to regulate whether or how adults have sex.
If you make laws about who may marry whom and under what circumstances, and stringently enforce laws against extramarital sex, you are effectively requiring a license for parenting.
And of course there are times and places where this has essentially been the case, at least if you interpret “laws” to include societal, religious, and/or cultural rules.
Question from baby quiz for soon-to-be parents: “In which end do you put the chili dog?” (Dilbert)
I don’t have children and I do believe that too many people have children, some of whom should probably better refrain from it. The thought that somebody should regulate that prerogative to procreate has crossed my mind, yes. But then I mused about who would do the regulating, and on which basis. And I came to the conclusion that, unfortunate as the situation may be now, and admiting that I may overstate the problem, any possible solution I could think of would be worse.
And under no circumstances would I call being a parent the last bastion of liberty. That is a basic category mistake.
I definitely agree any kind of regulating would be worse than whatever the present situation is now. Unless we turn into a complete authoritarian/controlled state society (think of the movie Equilibrium), any kind of stringent regulations placed on who is allowed and isn’t allowed to become parents would be troublesome.
Why do you think it’s not one of the last bastions of freedom? You are basically entrusted to care for a living human being and yet you require no special certification, license, training to do it. You basically have no specific rules you need to follow other than to not commit a crime. Outside of that, you can choose any which way you want to raise your kids, deploy your parenting style/strategies or none at all. You are literally free to do it any way you want with nobody monitoring you, tracking you, recording or evaluating you with grades, data, credits, stats etc. Again, as long as you are not abusing your child or breaking the laws, you can pretty much be a 1 out of 5 star parent and that would not be illegal.
Think about it this way. You can be denied a job at McDonald’s cuz you failed to qualify. You can be denied a driver’s license because you failed to qualify. You can be denied a bank loan because you failed to qualify. You can fail to get a high school diploma. But you are completely accepted and passed (instantly) to have a child and be a parent. If that isn’t freedom then I don’t know what is (except in the case of China’s one child policy…that is the complete opposite of freedom). It is one of the last bastion’s of human freedom and should always be (our given right to have children and be parents).
The thing is that you are using different definitions of freedom - if I am denied a job at McDonald’s , it’s because McDonald’s refuses to hire me, if I am denied a bank loan it’s because the bank refuses to lend me money. Neither of those involves the government in any way. Even failing to get a high school diploma might not involve the government in any way if I attend a private school.
But the only way in which I am free to have a child and be a 1 out of 5 star parent is that the government won’t prevent me from doing so on its own. I still might not be able to become a parent because I cannot become a parent on my own -unless I’m going to commit rape, I will need someone else’s cooperation. I either need someone to be willing to have sex with me or willing to be an unofficial sperm donor or a fertility specialist/sperm bank willing to work with me.
The same goes for actually being a parent. Sure , the government on its own will not prevent me from being a 1 out of 5 star parent- but the other parent might seek sole physical and legal custody and in a custody dispute between parents a court will decide. And if all I get is visitation every other weekend, I am really not free to be a parent. I meet the definition of the word but that’s not really what you are talking about.
Because there are plenty of other activities that are equally free from official constraint, and even becoming more free in certain ways. (Also, actual parenting in a developed society is nowhere near as “free” as you’re trying to paint it.)
You are equally free to provide the same sorts and amounts of care for a living human being who happens to be a severely disabled elderly parent or other relative, spouse, friend, etc. There’s nothing unique about parenthood in this context.
Parenthood is just one of the many situations in which an uncertified, unlicensed, untrained person is nonetheless allowed to care for the needs of a living human being who is unable to care for themselves.
Now, if you want to get officially PAID for providing such care, then you DO have to jump through various official hoops of training, licensing, certification, etc. But that is equally true whether the person you’re being paid to care for is a child or an adult.
And right there is the fuzzy thinking that makes your argument invalid. What do you think the laws officially criminalizing various forms of child abuse and neglect ARE, if not the governmentally imposed “rules” of parenting?
That’s like saying that there are no specific rules you need to follow in driving, other than to not commit a traffic violation. Yeah, that’s because the rules are in fact so important and mandatory that failure to follow them was deliberately written into law as a traffic violation.
Nobody monitors you or grades you on your driving, either, as long as you don’t commit a traffic violation. Despite all the bumper stickers saying “HOW’S MY DRIVING? CALL 1-800-EAT-SHIT” and similar, there is no formal evaluation process for driver performance other than determining whether or not they’re committing traffic violations. (Except for people who get paid for driving, of course, but again, that’s also true in the case of people who get paid for parenting.)
You are confusing parenting and procreation. And for both there are rules, whether you want to acknowledge them or not. You may not rape, you may not steal sperm, you may not abuse your child. Whether this rules are enforced or not, they are in force. Just like you are not allowed to speed drunk at 100 mph in the city center. Although you may get away with it if the police does not catch you. The only rule to follow in both cases is don’t get caught. And that is not really a rule. Nor is it freedom, much less its last bastion.
You are conflating the fact that biology will make you reproduce if you manage your sperm/your egg to merge with a suitable egg/sperm independently of any human laws with the freedom to parent. If you confuse biology with societal rules (i.e.: laws) I call it a category mistake.
Sometimes I wonder if fines for incompetent parenting might be in order. I mean, a kid should have been taught a basic body of knowledge by the time they hit kindergarten- stuff like the alphabet, the shapes, the colors, counting to ten, etc… Yet it’s all too common for kids to show up without that, and the school systems have to pay catch-up to compensate for these kids’ incompetent parents.
Maybe if your kid showed up, and parents got fined $200 for each of those things they neglected to teach their kids (except in cases of special-education type situations), then people would shape the hell up and put some effort into their kids’ educations.
Sometimes things backfire in unexpected ways. I remember reading in a book (was it Freakonomics?) that a kindergarden in Israel, tired of parents coming too late to pick up their children, which robbed the teachers of their free time, as they could not simply leave the kids alone and unattended, set up a system of financial penalties for late pickers. Only some parents saw it as a license to come later for a fee, and a modest one at that. So they came even later.
Same thing could happen with your proposal: 200$ for educationg my horrible brats and teaching them how to use a spoon and fork? That’s a bargain! I can imagine this applying to a fifth of parents or more. Add to them another two fifths that will not be able to pay, even if they wanted to, and your idea, alas!, does not work.
That’s why I said “I wonder”… I know those sorts of things often backfire. But it’s also very frustrating to see parents whose parenting is so poor that it’s actually a drag on everyone else. It makes the schools and other parents pick up the slack, as well as the general public.
I’m personally frustrated that the school systems have to spend so much effort and money dealing with so many issues that are home-related, and not actually education related.
One thing to keep in mind is that schools, in a way, operate as a sort of de facto police force vis a vis parenting. Kid shows up with visible bruises? Mandated reporting, and law enforcement is going to want a word. Kid shows obvious signs of malnutrition? Mandated reporting, and law enforcement is going to want a word.
I’ve heard it suggested that one reason home schooling should be banned, or at the very least more tightly regulated, is that home-schooled children don’t have mandated reporters checking on their welfare five out of seven days per week.*
I’m not saying this is a good idea or a bad idea, just reporting what I’ve read.
And that’s fair. It’s more the schools having to pick up the slack for incompetent parents that I am frustrated by. Not because the kids get something out of the deal, but because the parents aren’t being held accountable. You’re lazy and you don’t teach your kids the colors, alphabet, and how to count by the time your kids hit school? There’s no consequence for the parents. You have skewed priorities and you don’t put feeding your children as your #1 priority for your money? No consequence- the school will feed them.
And so on…
The parents don’t teaching the kids the colors? I never heard of kids being taught the colors around here, they just pick them up, like they learn what a cat and a dog and a cow is. Kids learn that kind of stuff on their own, it’s like languages. Colors are words, kids are made for learning that. How can a kid not know colors when they see them?
Well anyway: You think that a behaviour that damages first the kids themselves, and then indirectly the parents, who will get less return on the educational investment they are not providing, is best tackled by punishing the parents?
I believe this is a misguided assesment. Feels very US-American to me. On the one side, because there are consequences for the parents (and the children, obviously, and society). On the other side, because punishing the parents (“consequences!”) will worsen the situation. Even if it was just (which it is not!), it is wrong and unfair to the children.