License to Parent?

The controversial idea to restrict or control human breeding is not new. In 1980, Hugh LaFollette, Ethics professor at the University of South Florida, wrote a seminal essay on the topic titled Licensing Parents. Since then, philosophers and even some politicians have considered the idea, especially in light of China, the most populated country in the world, implementing a one-child policy that is in effect today.

For most people in the 21st Century, however, the idea of restricting the right to have offspring for any reason whatsoever seems blatantly authoritarian. Telling a person when and how many children they can have violates just about every core value we possess in a free society. It’s a thorny issue made even more complicated by the coming transhumanist era, which is almost upon us.

- See more at: govtslaves.info...

To me, this idea is Communist to the core. Much like china's "one child policy", this would be yet ANOTHER government control system, and we all know how much the U.S. government likes to stick their fingers in our cookie jar.

Total fertility rate (TFR) compares figures for the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age. TFR is a more direct measure of the level of fertility than the crude birth rate, since it refers to births per woman.
www.cia.gov...

The CIA itself estimates that the US population rate is 2.01. Since it takes 2 people to make a child, that is a sustaining trend. This information also suggests that countries that are poorer or less industrialized, generally have a higher population rate.

So of this information is accurate, and the US and other richer nations are hovering around a perfect repopulation rate, why is this idea being reborn? I'm curious to hear your opinions on the merits/downfalls of government licensing of potential parents.

a reply to: lonweld

The only problem with allowing people to have as many children as they want is that they are sometimes not the ones paying for them. As long as you are not taking money from others, you should be free to procreate as much as you want.

a reply to: lonweld

the idea of restricting the right to have offspring for any reason whatsoever seems blatantly authoritarian. Telling a person when and how many children they can have violates just about every core value we possess in a free society. It’s a thorny issue made even more complicated by the coming transhumanist era, which is almost upon us.

Actually it doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. IQ tests for all wannabee parents...hear hear !!!

o me, this idea is Communist to the core. Much like china's "one child policy",

This has nothing to do with Communism

a reply to: lonweld

To me, this idea is Communist to the core. Much like china's "one child policy", this would be yet ANOTHER government control system, and we all know how much the U.S. government likes to stick their fingers in our cookie jar.

I am not defending the communists,I am not a commie,we got rid of them because it was a bad and brutal political system,but you make a mistake here.I can give you an example in Eastern Europe,Romania in the commie period,where the govern finnancialy supported families with 4 kids or over and they also introduced a law in which abortion was illegal.Also,pregnant womans could get free vitamins,calcium or any other subtances that could help kids to be healthier.
Anyway,I am against this license parenting, we got a lot of easy and efficient ways to feed and maintain the population all over the world but we don't use them...

Is nothing sacred from TPTB anymore. what next..License to breath.

I can understand the strain to our welfare system, and I understand a human's choice. many people do agree that certain people should not be able to reproduce: for instance if they are economically unstable, or generally unfit for parenting. But who makes the decision as to who meets the criteria? How do you get everyone to agree with the idea? What do you do about "illegal births"?

On the flip side, what happens if there is no regulation in the future, and medical advances keep us living longer? Another point to take into consideration: although the "known" population rate in the US is stabilized, I don't see any information about how immigrants affect our population. For instance, 7 female children being born in India, moving to the US, then each having 2 children. Honestly, how much increase is there because of similar scenarios that remains unnoticed?

Do we really want the government controlling yet ANOTHER aspect of our lives? Can our infrastructure handle the current increase? How about food supply? I don't think this issue is as black and white as some people think.

The reality is we are all a mutation at conception. It's a mixed bag what comes out.

You can mix some of the best 'genes' and still bake a halfwit.

Plus it's a bit difficult for any parent to teach their child about life when our species still has no idea why we do that bat sh#t crazy stuff we do.

Have you forgot the good old days where you 'had' to get a blood test before you where marriage licence.

a reply to: lonweld

You know, it may sound hard but I am all for it, as long as is not selected childbearing, after all here in the US parenting is a sure welfare right, specially when the parenting is done by one parent.

Do you know that some people, makes more on welfare that they will do if they work? in some states. In todays economy people think that is ok to reproduce and let somebody else pay for their expanding family while they just sit and do nothing.

I only have two children because that is all my husband and I could afford without any help from somebody else tax dollars.

A licence to have children will be a revenue raising excercise. They will charge average people a hefty fee for this licence and people on welfare will not pay anything. What are they going to do to them, try and put the baby back in? Or take the baby away? As usual, this will hit the middle class only. Imagine telling a bunch of crack heads they need a licence to have a baby. That will stop them having kids I am sure. Or will people be jailed for having a child without a licence?
Or will the people who toe the party line be the only ones allowed to have a child?
I know that too many children are born into into terrible circumstances and abusive parents but these are the type of people who don't usually bother to get any type of licence anyway and do not follow any kind of rules. Loving parents don't need a licence.

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: lonweld


Do you know that some people, makes more on welfare that they will do if they work? in some states.

Maybe if Employers paid more those not willing to work would get off their Arses. if you think living on welfare is such an easy ride why dont you try it for a bit and report back your findings.

I have to say I'm against this idea.

It wouldn't work anyway, TPTB needs their slave caste.

The answer is really quite simple in my opinion.

You can not require a license to have children, that is ethically wrong, it is awful, shocking.

What you can do is to stop all government handouts, tax breaks and any other benefit after two children. Basically society will help families but if you choose to have more than two, benefits only apply to your first two.

This stops the welfare merry go round of more kids = more and more money.

TO have a government license required, considering the governments that we all have 'shudder'

Fully armed swat teams raiding a house and punching pregnant women, handcuffing them, dragging the screaming children ......... can the world get any sicker ...... yea, it can.

We already have Police aiming weapons at little kids.

P

this is not ethical no matter what. people's bodies should be absolutely sovereign. and as someone pointed out, in north america we are hovering right at a replacement rate, so population control doesn't present a compelling reason to trample on reproductive rights.

however, as a thought experiment, this is how it would have to go down.

we all vote on criteria. that criteria cannot include the candidate's race, iq, or potential health risks. what it can include is socio-economic status and psychological fitness. basically what you'd screen for in the adoption process.

reversible procedure guarantees sterility from adolescence until such time as one becomes a good candidate for parenting. yank all the teen moms off tv and pregnant stars off magazine covers. highlight the pluses of a childfree lifestyle in the media instead.

provide a virtual substitute to those who want to have kids, but don't qualify. simkid, or pokekid, or w/e.

and then shoot me in the back of the skull, cause i don't wanna live in that world.

a reply to: pheonix358

You can not require a license to have children, that is ethically wrong, it is awful, shocking.

I'm equally shocked that a state can tell me what I can or can't put in my body...yet it does.

Do you require a licence to drive a vehicle...yes you do. Why...because there are lives at stake with you behind the wheel...same way with parenting...IMO. And not just lives of your children....how we educate our kids, and what we put in their heads...the future of the world depends on it.

But, perhaps this is an inappropriate parallel.

originally posted by: ATODASO
this is not ethical no matter what. people's bodies should be absolutely sovereign.

I agree with you whole-heartedly, but the reality is that the government has chipped away at our rights to our own body. Abortion, drug use, prostitution are all outlawed. It's easy to point out all the bad that comes from these things, but you can honestly make a case for faults of having children as well. Strain on the system, raising gang bangers criminals and thugs, things of that nature.

Where does it stop? We certainly don't have "sovereignty" with our own bodies, yet many people think we should. Does that mean we should all have the ability to choose abortion or gettin high? Should we regulate some things but not others?

There's some interesting discussion here, I'd like to see it keep going. As I said before, it's not black and white.

Mario stated that this idea had nothing to do with communism.... I beg to differ. IMO it IS te definition of communism:

(often initial capital letter) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.
dictionary.reference.com...

a reply to: Soloprotocol

We don't have too, see we have education, my husband and me, we come from families that never had to depend on government assistance, that in turn has make us productive members of society and so our children, now adults.

Sadly those that are dependent on welfare most of the time with the exception of the few are born into welfare from families or mothers that has been on welfare themselves from birth.

It is a vicious cycle and for you to ask me to be on welfare myself, well it doesn't apply, somebody have to work in order to feed the welfare monster and my husband, me and my children are within the few ones still been targeted for paying the taxes.

If you don't think the birth control being shoved down your throat everywhere is population control then you need you look more closely.

I switched OBgyns because they repeatedly nagged me about birth control. It should have been in my file that I was allergic. It is on my file my youngest child is 10. So, clearly I know how to use a condom.

I got good laughs by starting to reply that they need to find a BC without a side effect of migraines. There isn't one! There are people that need those Rxs by focusing on someone that can't take that medicine they made me very uncomfortable.

a reply to: lonweld

Too many people is the problem. All shortages we experience today is because of people who have more than two children families. Everybody needs to get this through their heads, having more than two kids hurts others. Its stupid, unnecessary, and destructive. All problems we have come from overpopulation and over-consumption.

Yes I think it is time to limit the wanton reproduction by people who clearly have no understanding of the exponential function. The best way to implement this policy is to make the breeders pay for it. They are a bunch of leeches causing everybody else to pay more taxes to raise their brood. If you want to have multiple kids fine. But the tax deductions go away after two kids and a surcharge gets added to pay for the extra burden society has to carry for your selfish attitude.

You know this is a great topic. And one that I find myself appalled by almost every answer/idea including my own which has changed over the years. There is my gut feeling about it, my idealist opinion about it, my feminist opinion about it, I have a practical opinion about it and so forth.

After being a parent, teacher and observer of social trends, I can say with conviction that too many people who should not have children are bringing children into the world and not caring for them in ways that are wholesome. We pawn our children off on babysitter's and child care centers, contain them in over crowded schools that are little more then holding pens while their parents work for the system. I see a lot of child abuse and I'm not talking about physical violence though there is plenty of that, I'm talking about neglect in many forms sometimes by very well meaning parents.

Healthy child development requires attention to the physical, the mental, the emotional, the social and I see few children that learn these competencies. These competencies need to be modeled (as well as taught) by all the adults in a child's life. Supporting their development requires commitments of time and money from preferable two parents and a circle of caring adults. Children need to be with other children but not at the expense of being with healthy productive adults.

All that said - my gut says Yes to Parental Licensing. We need a license to drive, we need to know the laws of the road and to do basic maintence, what to do in a accident. Why shouldn't we require some basic parenting skills?

But then the political and idealogical problem pop up. Who decides on the standards, yadda, yadda, yadda along with the near certainity of any such system being twisted to support Big Money.

So on that front No.

Our OP talked of the US having, according to his sources, an average birth rate of 2.1 or the like. That's an average over the whole population regardless of race or economic status. And it is still 'growth' in a time we need to bring birth rates down (i.e. more deaths per year then births).

The commie angle - isn't communist it's Authoritarianism. I'm not sure what to call the Chinese state right now, but it's much more capitalist then communist and has been since Nixon went to China.

Overpopulation is a huge problem for children's wellbeing and therefore the wellbeing of the planet and all it's systems. Empowering women great way to address the population problem as well as addressing the Child Development problem. Generally, empowered (meaning not afraid for whatever reason) women do not have more children then they can easily care for.

Good Topic.

originally posted by: Soloprotocol
Is nothing sacred from TPTB anymore. what next..License to breath.

Are you aware of how much CO2 you breathe out in a year? They could tax that you know ...