Jan 04 2009
Poor Parenting: Time to Require a License to be a Parent
It is horrifically sad that a father reportedly killed his two-and-a-half-year-old son because he owed $4,000 of child support. 
The atrociousness of this murder is exponentially compounded by the fact that this is not a novel event. Each year parents, step-parents, babysitters, foster parents, and grandparents are found guilty of willful or negligent murder of children in their care.
Where is the country’s value system? Why do we test people to see if they can correctly cut hair or draft a deed, but we totally “trust” something – I don’t know what – to insure that a wee human being will be nourished, nurtured, and protected by his parents. What insanity!
The biological capacity to make a baby does NOT automatically endow the parents with the skills to raise it. One may counter that there are mandated reporters to watch for abuse and then agencies in place to intervene, should it be deemed necessary. If one further attempts to assert that these adequately manage the problem, this is not so.
Pre-parental training and testing is overdue.
It is absolutely horrific that children die, no matter how or why. But, the mandation of preparental training and testing is unconstitutional (not to mention virtually unenforceable), nor will those solve the problem. People are going to do stupid, hurtful things that are just plain wrong, but legislation won’t stop those things from being done.
Hi DNCResearch,
Thanks for your comment. I am responding from true ignorance - not inviting you to enter into a spitting contest. What provision(s) of the US Constitution do you think prohibits this sort of testing? Also, since this is a health and safety matter, it is more properly within the realm of states’ governance. However, the feds take over anything they’d like by invoking the Commerce Clause.
I am thinking that the most viable way to accomplish the pre-parenting training and license goal is to tie it to an economic benefit. For example, many federal grants and loans for college are pre-conditioned on males proving they have registered with Selective Service. Supposedly in China, one’s health benefits are tied to limiting the family to one child. I wonder if that would be the way to accomplish the goal of a little training and a little prevention of child abuse.