I have often thought that all male children should have a vasectomy at birth. Thereafter, they could purchase a license to produce one child at a time through artificial insemination. This would insure that all people having children want children, and the license fee would be sufficiently high that the people would have demonstrated the ability to care financially for said children. Gay and Lesbian couples could purchase licenses too, and simply hire a surrogate, or adopt from another country.
I don’t take this too seriously, but I have thought about what it might be like in a Si-Fi alternative universe kind of way.
While it’s something I occasionally like to joke rather seriously about (birth control in the water!), I wouldn’t support actual legislation along those lines. First, I’d want my standards enforced, but I acknowledge that my standards aren’t everyone else’s. ('Sides, I don’t want to spend all my time interviewing perspective parents!) Second, I most certainly don’t trust this government (or any other tha I can come up with) to enforce said standards. We have a hard enough time enforcing basic criminal laws - do we really want to try to enforce a ban on unauthorized child birth?
And, really, when it comes down to it, and as much as I sometimes wish otherwise, I don’t think it’s a decision we get to make for anyone else. Yup, even them.
India has been grappling with out of control population growth for years. Many attempts have been made to provide birth control/contraception and improve the standard of living. It doesn’t and isn’t working. The rural population won’t use contraception. Indian men, once they have had several children won’t get vasectomies. And the problem is further compounded by the fact that Indian families will continue to breed until they have a son at the expense of having several girls first and to the point where they commit infanticide on baby girls because they can’t support them. Secondly, Indian men HAVE volunteered to have vasectomies. The result? Their wives then refuse to have sex with them AT ALL because of supertitious beliefs.
The same is similar in countries like Ethiopia, which is once again facing a massive famine. Families have too many children. And this is by choice. They won’t use contraception. They have has many children as possible with the knowledge that many will starve but with the hope that at a least a few will survive.
African women have been using an effective form of birth control for centuries when they choose to its called amenorrhea.
This is it, exactly. I think we’re all agreed that we know people who just shouldn’t have kids. But allowing the government that kind of control over people would be a Very Bad Thing, and extremely scary.
This sort of reminds me of the hypothetical we were given in high school (IIRC, the teacher adapted it from Paul Harvey, so take it as you will.).
The scenario is that two women with vaguely similar circumstances are seeking abortion. Who do you give permission to? The answer was that if you allowed both women to abort, you would have spared the world from the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, but denied it the genius of Leonardo da Vinci.
For all I know, Aaron could either grow up to be the next Charles Manson (although I certainly intend to raise him to avoid that possibility) or he could grow up to be the one who negotiates a permanent peace in the Middle East. Or the next Stephen Hawking. Or the next Bill Gates. Or even the next Emmitt Smith. Okay, those are extreme examples, but the point I’m trying to make is that by denying a person the right to have a baby, you may also be denying the world of something greater.
So, no. I don’t agree with the idea of parental licensing.
I’m a transsexual lesbian. Realistically, what do you think my chances of getting a parenting license are? (Note: I said realistically. We all know that whether I would get one or not would have very little to do with my actual parenting skills.)
This is one of the most persistent bad ideas to ever be propsed repeatedly. I for one am glad that we do not have such licensing. Who decides? Take a look on the roads. Do you want the same bureaucracy that is responsible for licensing drivers to license parents? How would this help? We can’t predict who will be good parents. If we could predict who would make poor parents, I think our efforts would be better spent assisting them to be better parents than to try to make it illegal for them to become parents. What’s next, breathing licenses?
You cant build a resume for ‘parent.’ Some professionally unsuccesful financially insecure folks might have deep hearts and be very good parents. Other professionally succesful people are uncaring and horrible. What do you base the liscensing on - the ONLY thing I can think that I might outlaw is banning somebody with a history of prior abuse.
If you do it based on interviews and what not - based on the success rate Ive noticed in job interviews where I work, I would not support it. Some people can sell themselves amazingly well then turn out to be horrible workers. The same, Id imagine, is true about parenting.
Eidolon, I can’t make assumptions about the beliefs on Indian men and women, and their use or nonuse of contraception, simply because I don’t feel I have enough information to do so. However, I also mentioned that an increase in the standard of living has been shown to result in a decrease in population growth. Here is some analysis of population growth in Mexico illustrating that finding.
Could you further explain that? The definition of amenorrhea that I am familiar with is a cessation of the menstral cycle in women, usually due to low body fat.
Oh, and to clarify–the unmarried 19 year old was my mother, not myself.
I see no way for such a system to work, and even if it were theoretically possible to be implemented, I would not want to live under a government that did so.
I think it’d be a great idea if it could be made objective and fair, but that to me seems utterly impossible. Mandatory basic parental training might not be a bad idea, though, perhaps with recurring or “advanced” training as one has more kids.
no, but I am considering mandatory steriliation to anyone saved by medical science since these people should not have reproduced and if they are allowed to pass possible defective genes on to their offspring thereby weakining humanity
Does that include people who are saved by medical science after being hit by a car? Or is the inability to dodge badly-driven cars proof of “genetic inferiority”?
Unfortunately, this thread is not in the Pit, or I would tell you how I really feel about your idea.
Humans are not a breeding project. The thought of culling humans is repugnant to me and to do so through sterilization is as odius as murdering culls. I am grateful that most who have the necessary lack of humanity to believe in and enforce such a plan also lack the power needed as well.
Medical science? Should that include any who avoid bowel impaction by taking a laxative or enema? How about eating bran? Any who use aspirin or tylenol to reduce a fever? What of those who bandage a cut? Why stop at medical science, what of those that have the temerity to wear shoes and clothes and use other technical measures like fire to protect them from the elements? Surely these things make the race less hardy.
I hope you are being facetious, but I have met those who believe in such hateful, arrogant , genocidal plans.
Eh, depends on the actual terms of “licensing” decided upon. Do I believe that anyone who is physically capable of reproducing be allowed to do so, regardless of their ability to support a child or raise a child well? No, but not because of genetic inferiority/eugenics. Some people lack the interest or ability to raise a child to be a productive/well-adjusted member of society. Example – we have a friend who has been raising his children (now 11 and 14) on his own for the last 8 years. His son and daughter are some of the best-behaved children we know. You can take them anywhere and not have to worry about their behavior, and they’re a lot of fun to be around. His girlfriend, however, has a 16 year old daughter who’s just plain obnoxious. She’s been allowed to do pretty much whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted and it really shows. She has screaming tantrums when told she has to be home by 11PM on a school night, doesn’t see why she can’t go to parties with some 20-year old guy she just met, stuff like that. I don’t like being around this child and certainly wouldn’t take her anywhere on my own. Is this the child’s fault? No, it’s her parents’ for not taking the time to teach her how to behave.
So, “licensing” per se, probably not, but definitely some kind of mandatory parenting classes. Not just pre-natal classes, but refresher/supplementary classes at 5, 10, and 15 years. It’ll never happen, though.
Anyway, I have a simple question for everyone who thinks the government would do a horrible job licensing parents: what do you think about adoption? Should anyone who wants to adopt a child just be able to, no strings attached? Or should they be screened, exactly like the government does now? If the latter (as I suspect most of you support), why the double standard for people who just happened to have the misfortune of being born infertile?
And how many more ways is the goverment going to tell people how to live.
Who decides what is good parenting? How would classes be taught? Who would issue the license? What would the punishment be for parenting without a license? What if you had a license, but ended up being a bad parent?
Frankly, if there was such a thing as parental licensing, I would not have my son.
I was a 20 year old, unmarried, college drop out with no real job shacking up with a 29 year old punk with an equally dubious work ethic who was still technically married to his first wife and whose two children were living with his mother. (Although I can’t blame him for that. he had a kind of nervous breakdown when his first marriage ended, but he made sure his kids were taken care of, even if it wasn’t by him.)
To any outsider, I’m sure our situation looked very bad. We had a tiny one bedroom apartment in a shitty neighborhood, and I was having anxiety attacks every time I thought about going to work.
But finding out that we were pregnant is what made us suddenly take our lives seriously. He got a good job, we got a nicer apartment, his kids moved in with us. I stopped working to devote myself to the kids. He finalized his divorce and we got married. Overnight I went from irresponsible twenty-something to doting mother of three. My kids are my world, and I like it that way.
When I was pregnant, I stayed up at night crying because I was sure I wasn’t good enough to be a good parent. But even before he was born, I felt that unbreakable connection between a mother and child. If I had been forced to abort him, or give him up for adoption, I probably would have killed myself to escape from that pain.
I guess what I am saying is, if I didn’t even know I could be a good parent, how the hell could anyone else know? And what right does anyone have to forcibly take my child away, before his conception, before his birth, or after I have held him in my arms?