Poll: Should having children require a licence?

[Diddy_Mao]

While I'd never suggest penalizing those who feel they need to procreate, I certainly feel we should phase out the tax breaks and social incentives and funnel those funds into furthering sexual education, personal and home economics and planned parenthood programs.

In other words stop raising generations of folks who are pig ignorant about the realities of sex, prepare them for life as adults and provide them the skills and utilities to make rational decisions about whether or not they're actually prepared to bring another life into the world.

 

[dyre]

Hmm, and how would we handle the unlicensed births? This sounds eerily similar to a program in Australia in which the government stole the children of undesirable mothers (often telling the mothers that the child died at birth) and sent them to other, more "acceptable" families.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_adoption_in_Australia

I understand the desire to make sure that every child is born into responsible, loving families, but the method you propose will only lead to more suffering.

Perhaps a more suitable solution would to replace child-based welfare, tax breaks, etc with "childcare stamps," which could only be used to purchase childcare related products and services (like with food stamps, the government would compensate the businesses later). It would at least help ensure that the irresponsible parents aren't using the money to feed their drug addictions or pay for new smartphones while their kids starve.

 

[Someone Depressing]

1) Nobody would pay it any attention anyway.

2) What are we gonna do? Find the woman, and forcibly abort her child with crude equipment we got from a hobo for a sandwich?

3) Most children are accidental; there's no point in discussing that, it's more or less a fact of life. And so many people are against abortion, and they're more often than not really young. And who's to say their religion didn't go against abortion?

4) Oh God, so many moral issues.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

NonoNONONONonoNONonONoNonONoNoNoNoNoNONNNNOOOOOnononoNOnOnoOnONONONONoo.

Ok, now I've got that out the way.
As many previous posters have said, it would not only be impossible to enforce (how hard should the test be? how would accidental births be dealt with?) but also it gives the state essentially the say over who is fit to have a life. The idea of 'who decides what a good parent is' is so hugely controversial and (in my ill-informed opinion at least) impossible to answer that trying to create such a test/license would just be bedlam.
I am all for state run schools hospitals and other necessities of life, but giving it the power to decide who gets to breed? That sounds like something from a dodgy thriller novel.
Something with greek letters in the name.
Y'know, the kind that comprise of 86.4% of all airport book sales.

It's also has more moral issues than Israel.

 

[krazykidd]

This sounds very Orwellian. Sure we need to stop people having kids that cant look after them but that problem is down to education as barbas says. Sure we are taught about contraception and the physical act of having a child but people are never told the financial "burden" and the effort it takes to have a child

I agree. People focus too much on how children are "blessings", and not enough on how they are "curses".

I do think there should be a country for adults and only adults. You can move there once you're 25, and if someone get's pregnant, both the male and the female get evicted. I'd totally live there.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Here we go again.
*takes deep breath*
Nope.

I should probably expand, although I don't think the subject is worth it. If licences were required in Bizarro World, how would you even enforce it?

Forced sterilisations?
Forced abortions?
Putting all children born to parents without licenses in care?

What would be the criteria for getting a licence?

Money?
Employment?
Mental Stability?

You can't predict how someone is going to fare as a parent, there are too many variables. Added to that, who would decide what the criteria should be? This idea comes up every so often and it's mind-bogglingly stupid and so far removed from reality.

This really. Alot of people have kids when they shouldnt, but there is nothing anyone can do to stop them without forced sterilisation. Ive read stories of a crack addict having kid after kid. All were taken off her. Cant do anything without causing loads of legal and human right issues regardless if its right.

 

[lacktheknack]

I don't understand this site. One moment, we're expected to learn and educate ourselves and keep government hands off of our decisions, and the next, we're expected to have the government make our decisions for us so we don't have to learn and educate ourselves.

Pick one, pls

 

[EeveeElectro]

I've been ninja'd plenty of times in this thread, but going on what other people said, it's not right to restrict a basic biological function.
You get a licence for a car, a gun, a dog, a job because that's something you choose to do. It's a false equivalence.

It's been mentioned before but how do you define who is going to be a good parent before they are one? Some people are nice people but shitty parents. Some people have questionable life choices but are fantastic parents. Am I not allowed a child because I carry some extra weight and might pass on my genes? Because I like to dye my hair a lot? Because I work part time and would need financial help?

It's one of the stupidest and most inhumane concepts I can think of. Pregnancy can happen by accident, some of my friends have become pregnant on the pill or whilst using other contraceptives. Punishing someone for their mistakes and forcing them to put their body through something they don't want to is a disgusting thought.

What we DO need is better child services. The social services have made too many mistakes and they need to vastly improve. Too many children are going abused and living in poverty, too many have died because of poor choices on behalf of social services.

 

[Jacco]

Absolutely we should require licenses.

Safeguards need to be put in place to keep targeted licensing from becoming a problem, but overall we should absolutely require licenses. If a child is conceived by a couple without a license, it is aborted. If the couple continues to conceive children, they are subject to penalties.

The single greatest problem with modern humanity, in my opinion, is that people who should not be breeding are doing so. The only way to curb that is by legislation.

 

[Ratty]

In theory this is what social services are for. Innocent until proven guilty, you assume someone is a capable parent until they prove otherwise. It's far from a perfect system- it's hardly something that's likely to affect rich neglectful parents, but it can and does punish some poor parents and their families just for being poor. ("Love you kids and do everything you can for them, but can't afford to meet some of our standards? Instead of helping you we're going to take your kids away then.") But it's the best we've got right now.

Even if it were logistically feasible and practical to mandate a license I don't think it would ever happen. High birthrates, especially among the poor and/or young are needed for the continual supply of menial laborers and soldiers on who's backs society runs.

 

[Gigano]

Do you want forced abortions on unwilling women?

Because that'd be the only real way to actually enforce such a license. Punish the women after they've given birth, and society will be the one starting the child out with a destitute mother with a criminal record.

So no, simply because it's not possible to implement in a way that requires any sort of actual enforcement. Offering education and support to vulnerable/inept parents, though? Hell yes, that's money well spent on all levels! You potentially prevent tons of costly problems in the future, while making life better for innocent children. And if the parents happen to benefit too, there's no harm in that.

Obviously that won't always work - it probably won't work most of the times, but the times it do will more than return the investment - and that's what social services are for. If you can't look after your child, and you can't/won't learn how to look after your child, then you don't get to have a child. Though given that state orphanages aren't exactly known for their warm and loving care with lots and lots of attention given to the individual child, a certain amount of dysfunction must be accepted, simply because it'd fuck the child up more to remove it from the parents.

 

[JoJo]

Yeah, no. Given how bureaucratic the UK government is with adoptions, or anything really, I wouldn't trust them for a moment to run a child licencing system fairly. Just wait and there would be people rejected for smoking, or being slightly overweight, or not having a large enough house, or having 'extremist' political or religious beliefs (defined by the government, of course). How would you test this properly anyway, someone could know all the right answers in theory and then just be a lazy parent in practice.

I do think there should be a country for adults and only adults. You can move there once you're 25, and if someone get's pregnant, both the male and the female get evicted. I'd totally live there.

I endorse this idea, we could also send all the child sex offenders there and kill two birds with one stone, then the rest of us could get on with our lives in peace.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Yes. You need a license to have a gun, drive a car, operate machinery, etc. But you don't need a license to raise another human being?

I think it SHOULD require license, but we realistically don't have any method of enforcing it right now.

But this guy has an even better idea:

I'm starting to think that there should at least be a mandatory suitability evaluation for new parents, so clearly unfit parents don't get to raise kids. Nothing very strict, just a basic check for drug abuse, mental illness, domestic abuse, etc. The kinds of things that would get kids removed from homes by child protective services already.

With this, everybody wins. No comparisons to one-child policy or Orwell.

All children would get loving parents that would raise them with care and compassion! The horror, the horror!

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but we do not in fact live in a perfect world.

 

[BarkBarker]

I imagine some form of test to ensure you have the capabilities, mostly mentally, of raising a child, its a burden on finance yeah and many other things, but NO ONE seems to really grasp the nature of a life that will be dependant on you, scream when you want to sleep, crave your approval, need your firm guidance and so on and so on. I live next door to a screaming brat of a child with shitty parents, they have had 1 child who is a slut and moved out, one who is a fucking brat and moved out, one who they force responsibilities upon, and then the screamer child. Oh how those parents need a brick to the face, they just don't give a shit about the banging every day at random intervals, the screaming, the bad behaviour and her incessant desire to yell at someone a fucking foot away from her. The worst part is, I know it's not the kids fault, the kid thinks this is okay, the parents don't give a damn, and worst of it all? I know if I ever have kids, they will have to grow up with THAT screaming fucker being the whore at school who yells and ruins theirs learning, or the twat who plays his music on a loudspeaker as he gets on the bus. Parenthood should need more than a dick, a vagina, a libido and 9 months.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

No, keep the government out of anything.

I'm actually quite afraid of the population boom, our limited resources and yadda yadda. I agree with the idea in principal, but I can't see how it can be enforced without us being Nazis (Maybe a heavy tax? What do we do about rape victims?) nor is it wise to have government regulation in anything*.

*Well at very least, you want as little as possible.