Our society normally regulates a certain range of activities; it is illegal to perform these activities unless one has received prior permission to do so. We require automobile operators to have licenses. We forbid people from practicing medicine, law, pharmacy, or psychiatry unless they have satisfied certain licensing requirements...
...Society’s decision to regulate just these activities is not ad hoc. The decision to restrict admission to certain vocations and to forbid some people from driving is based on an eminently plausible, although not often explicitly formulated, rationale. We require drivers to be licensed because driving an auto is an activity which is potentially harmful to others, safe performance of the activity requires a certain competence, and we have a moderately reliable procedure for determining that competence. The potential harm is obvious: incompetent drivers can and do maim and kill people. The best way we have of limiting this harm without sacrificing the benefits of automobile travel is to require that all drivers demonstrate at lease minimal competence. We likewise license doctors, lawyers, and psychologist because they perform activities which can harm others. Obviously they must be proficient if they are to perform these activities properly, and we have moderately reliable procedures for determining proficiency.
...These general criteria for regulatory licensing can certainly be applied to parents. First, parenting is an activity potentially very harmful to children. The potential for harm is apparent...
...Our moral and legal systems already recognize that not everyone is capable of rearing children well. In fact, well-entrenched laws require adoptive parents to be investigated—in much the same ways and for much the same reasons as in the general licensing program advocated here… …we do not allow just anyone to adopt a child… … without first estimating the likelihood of the person’s being a good parent...
from Licensing Parents, by Hugh LaFollette, as included in The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, pg740-755.
6 comments:
Here's the problem...
When you take a test for a driver's license, or you take a test for a medical license, They are completely based off of your knowledge. That's what tests are, they test one's knowledge.
How do you test someone who wants to be a parent. Do you just ask them questions on parenting? See what they know about it?
Basically in order to successfully achieve this suggestion for a "parenting license" you would need to test the parents on their morals. How do you do that?
The argument by LaFollette is motivated by a desire to restrict who may parent in order to protect children from being harmed.
We may not be able to assess who has the potential to be a 'fun' parent, or a 'boring' parent... neither of which LaFollette is worried about...
...but SURELY we would be able to assess who would likely to abuse/neglect their children, and deny them a license? No?
I would guess so... you should asses the parent for anger management issues, so you know weither the child is going to be in good and safe arms or not. It's not right to put a child with a couple or a single violent parent. Poor kid.
I think you should earn a parenting licence. It picks out the bad seeds from the group of people who want and honestly deserve a smart, healthy child.
To follow up alex's example, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ASSESS A PERSON WHO'S NEVER HAD A CHILD BEFORE TO SEE IF THEY CAN CARE FOR IT? That is why you should be able to take parenting classes at ones own will.
Overall, yes, we should have parenting lisences.
People already have a license to have children; functioning reproductive organs.
If those organs can't function--- if they don't fit into the right place, if the right juices can't get through, or the right juices are rejected--- well then no child will be had.
Also if one can't find a mate. I've seen a dejected arctic sea bird here and there on tv, camera rolling, focused on the poor pathetic creature trying to impress someone with it's inflatable attraction sac....watching the other birds necking and building their nests as he pitiably waddles back to the ocean so very cold.
Nature seems to have mostly done a pretty good job deciding who will live and what will die. But as far as natural selection goes, so goes one of the few instances where the actions of humanity have successfully usurped nature...much to the detriment of humanity and all life. We've become too successful, and there are more than enough of us for every recessive gene to find another recessive gene to copulate with.
Of course, I'm getting into things that smack of eugenics and are generally reviled by most people. But I fail to see how different judgment based on what someone's future behavior towards their child would be. In fact, it sounds just sinister. It sounds like genetic control is just being transformed into behavioral control. What would constitute abuse? What is tests can be done to see who will abuse their child? It's childish to even think in this way. Abuse is such a widespread part of life, all around the world, and touches an unbelievable number of people. I can say without pride that I too have had experiences of abuse in my young childhood, minor compared to many I am sure, but it still impacted me in a profound way and will forever shape the kind of person I am. I sometimes don't particularly like being me, but I sure as hell have never wanted to be anyone else.
There are people who should not reproduce and do. There are arguable millions, billions of people who should not reproduce and do. We spread like a virus, and it is a problem too complex, too deeply rooted in the mysteries of human conscious and the purpose of life itself to try and dissect. Nature has, for all of what may very well be eternity, worked the way it does in a way that, since we have nothing else to compare it to, perfect. Life, specifically humans, may very well be unnatural in their imperfection....they may be sacred in their imperfections, they may be revolting in their imperfections... I don't know. But it is increasingly clear that we can never trust what we believe to be the best for ourselves
or others
Hmm.... powerfully put. Thank you.
I wish I had more to respond with... but I'm a bit speachless right now... which is probably a good thing because your heartfelt words definitely deserve to be reflected on...
Watch out, this is really long and annoying.
It's true, nature can often be the best judge of things. It's also true that nature can be unfathomable, and it would be foolish to assume that all its nuances can ever be pierced. But havn't we evolved to this point? Since evolution has given us a brain, and a brain has given us our society, and our society is what will eventually decide on issues like licensing parents, then can't our actions all be viewed as natural? It's very hard to percieve something that we ourselves are part of.
Because of this, if humans decided that a prerequisite for parents was a license, than it would not go against nature, nor would it be a first. In wolf pakcs, for example, only the alpha male and female are allowed to mate with eachother. If other pairs had puppies, than the pack would probably not be able to obtain enough food for them. The restriction is in place to keep the young from harm. Whether restriction itself is right is not an issue, only the implementation.
Think about it. Cars and doctors are fine, but reproduction, according to theories like evolution, is the purpose of our existance. Wolves live in small, local groups. If some of them are restricted from mating, at least the decision is local and enforced by individuals they know. Is it right to let a faraway government who doesn't know your circumstances and who may have values or beliefs you don't know about decide what makes you fit to be a parent?
No. There is too much of a margin for error there. There would also be inherent unfairness; a disproportionate number of blacks, for example, live in poverty. Might conditions in which it is hard to secure adequate food and shelter bar them from having children? Might this lead to the extermination of their race altogether? Or would other groups, differentiated by their religion, sexuality, or race, be discriminated against, either nation-wide or locally by corrupt administrators of the test, as they already are in adoption. The U.S. may be mostly fair and equal, but other countries of the world are certainly oppressive, and there's no guarantee than the U.S. might not turn out like them eventually. Why give tyranny another tool?
Though licensing parents is not inherently wrong, the logistics of it just leave too much room for error to make it practical. Adoption is different, because it only fills people's desire for a child, not their biological purpose of life.
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