death penalty

[Derived Absurdity]

http://edmontonjournal.com/storyline/th ... sons-death" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

^ I know saying people need a license to have kids is authoritarian and fascist, and I don't believe it, but seriously. Something needs to change. This should not have been allowed to happen.

[CashRules]

It's too damn easy to find cases that really test my opposition to the death penalty. It doesn't say what their religious beliefs were but the "not going to doctors" part sounds like some weird cult that's even worse than the Jehovah's Witnesses, an organization that should have been criminalized worldwide a century ago.

[Chuckles_Otoole]

people need a license to have kids

Fixed.

I mean seriously, you have to have a license to drive a car or operate a business.

[aels]

Jesus Christ, that poor baby.

[Derived Absurdity]

people need a license to have kids

Fixed.

I mean seriously, you have to have a license to drive a car or operate a business.

ik

I don't know why my instinct says making it so you have to have a license to have kids is more fascist, but it does.

[aels]

I suspect it's because it's one of those things that you know would be applied disproportionately severely towards people who are poor or POC or disabled. It's an idea which could be incredibly meritocratic in principle but borderline eugenicist in practice.

[Derived Absurdity]

Exactly.

And also poor people generally have lower IQs, probably due to their terrible stressful environment (and low IQ leads to bad parenting). So once again it would be a measure trying to personalize and individualize systemic and structural problems. It would be a form of society-wide (quasi-)victim-blaming. Blaming parents for something society-at-large did.

Of course that's not to absolve the unimaginably terrible people in the OP.

[Derived Absurdity]

And what values would we use to test these peoples' parenting skills"? The values of the rich and powerful, who are far shittier parents in general than the proles.

[aels]

And when the rules were inevitably broken, we'd be in the position of having to legally punish people for having children and presumably remove those children to be raised by the state. And I know kids *do* get taken away by the state but it's generally because of concrete threats to their wellbeing rather than because their parents scored poorly on a test.

[Blade Azaezel]

And when the rules were inevitably broken, we'd be in the position of having to legally punish people for having children and presumably remove those children to be raised by the state. And I know kids *do* get taken away by the state but it's generally because of concrete threats to their wellbeing rather than because their parents scored poorly on a test.

and even if kids were taken away by the state in this situation, they'd probably end up failed by the state like so many children currently are.

also...also...it's just another way that patriarchy would have control over a woman's vagina and what she can, or can't, do with it

[aels]

My little baby all grown up and dismantling the patriarchy

[Blade Azaezel]

My little baby all grown up and dismantling the patriarchy

First the patriarchy, then capitalism!!

[Eva Yojimbo]

Horrifying story. So sad to think that stuff like that still happens in this day and age.

And also poor people generally have lower IQs, probably due to their terrible stressful environment (and low IQ leads to bad parenting). So once again it would be a measure trying to personalize and individualize systemic and structural problems. It would be a form of society-wide (quasi-)victim-blaming. Blaming parents for something society-at-large did.

No doubt that any implementation of parenting license would exacerbate certain systemic problems, but here's a potentially upsetting bottom line question: do you think such a thing would be a net positive or negative for children and society at large?

[Derived Absurdity]

Almost certainly a net negative. In practice it probably wouldn't be much different than Southern literary tests.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Then I think you can sleep better at night. I'm less certain than you are, but more because it's really difficult (for me, at least) to form any kind of solid impression on what the positives/negatives would be to begin with: the idea appears as a foggy blur in my head. Just too many variables (not the least of which would be the actual law and implementation).

[Derived Absurdity]

I mean, my feelings on the whole concept of parenting are all messed up and so out-of-line with what 99.9999% of people believe in the first place. But stories like this really IMO show the major problems with the whole idea. I mean, if you step back and really look at it, what is parenting? Basically two people who by virtue of being biologically capable of reproducing are granted the legal right to maintain virtually unlimited power and control over another human being for approximately eighteen years. Physical force, emotional violence, and using that human being as (basically) slave labor are all legally justified and often encouraged for eighteen full years. It's basically a private tyranny against a brand-new human being by two people who have absolutely zero idea how to raise kids beyond the example set by their own parents. There's no manual, there's no test, there's no instructions, there's nothing. Legally I can raise a kid for literally no reason other than I'm over eighteen, even though I don't know anything about kids. Looked at objectively, this whole concept is completely 100% batshit fucking insane.

This isn't really any less authoritarian and tyrannical than state-enforced licenses, or even raising kids in some sort of dystopian commune. It's just a private, more individualistic tyranny. Being trapped in a house for eighteen years under the near-unlimited authority of two people who have no idea what they're doing who have the legal right to physically harm you and force you to undergo manual labor and who can restrict your freedoms in virtually any way they choose for any reason they want is pretty authoritarian in any sense of the word.

So I would rather do away with the whole "parenting" thing anyway.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I mean, my feelings on the whole concept of parenting are all messed up and so out-of-line with what 99.9999% of people believe in the first place. But stories like this really IMO show the major problems with the whole idea. I mean, if you step back and really look at it, what is parenting? Basically two people who by virtue of being biologically capable of reproducing are granted the legal right to maintain virtually unlimited power and control over another human being for approximately eighteen years. Physical force, emotional violence, and using that human being as (basically) slave labor are all legally justified and often encouraged for eighteen full years. It's basically a private tyranny against a brand-new human being by two people who have absolutely zero idea how to raise kids beyond the example set by their own parents. There's no manual, there's no test, there's no instructions, there's nothing. Legally I can raise a kid for literally no reason other than I'm over eighteen, even though I don't know anything about kids. Looked at objectively, this whole concept is completely 100% batshit fucking insane.

This isn't really any less authoritarian and tyrannical than state-enforced licenses, or even raising kids in some sort of dystopian commune. It's just a private, more individualistic tyranny. Being trapped in a house for eighteen years under the near-unlimited authority of two people who have no idea what they're doing who have the legal right to physically harm you and force you to undergo manual labor and who can restrict your freedoms in virtually any way they choose for any reason they want is pretty authoritarian in any sense of the word.

So I would rather do away with the whole "parenting" thing anyway.

I agree with most of this which is why I don't really have an issue with licences and frequent reviews for parents. And when it comes to the rights of the parents or how this might impact the poor or minorities disproportionately I find it hard to care too much because my focus is on the welfare of the children.

[Boomer]

This thread is crazy. Parental licenses are a fucking terrible, horrid idea.

If you don't like the power dynamic between parents and children, the correct stance would be to expand children's rights, not to reduce parental rights.

[Derived Absurdity]

You kind of have to reduce parental rights to expand children' rights. It's like workers and bosses in that way.

[Boomer]

In a superficial sense, maybe. Expanding child emancipation and child abuse laws would reduce a parent's "right" to exploit and abuse their child, though I would contend the parent doesn't (or shouldn't) really have that right in the first place.

Conversely, parental licenses* would not empower children, they would just depower people in general. I feel most people on this board agree that we live in a patriarchal society with institutionalized racism and gross income inequality, so why should we give a group mostly comprised of rich white men (aka the government) the power to decide who gets to have kids?

* I realize you said you were against parental licenses, DA

[Eva Yojimbo]

I mean, my feelings on the whole concept of parenting are all messed up and so out-of-line with what 99.9999% of people believe in the first place. But stories like this really IMO show the major problems with the whole idea. I mean, if you step back and really look at it, what is parenting? Basically two people who by virtue of being biologically capable of reproducing are granted the legal right to maintain virtually unlimited power and control over another human being for approximately eighteen years. Physical force, emotional violence, and using that human being as (basically) slave labor are all legally justified and often encouraged for eighteen full years. It's basically a private tyranny against a brand-new human being by two people who have absolutely zero idea how to raise kids beyond the example set by their own parents. There's no manual, there's no test, there's no instructions, there's nothing. Legally I can raise a kid for literally no reason other than I'm over eighteen, even though I don't know anything about kids. Looked at objectively, this whole concept is completely 100% batshit fucking insane.

This isn't really any less authoritarian and tyrannical than state-enforced licenses, or even raising kids in some sort of dystopian commune. It's just a private, more individualistic tyranny. Being trapped in a house for eighteen years under the near-unlimited authority of two people who have no idea what they're doing who have the legal right to physically harm you and force you to undergo manual labor and who can restrict your freedoms in virtually any way they choose for any reason they want is pretty authoritarian in any sense of the word.

So I would rather do away with the whole "parenting" thing anyway.

I agree with most of this as well. The immense moral burden that raising children entails is one reason I've never been interested in having any--I feel like I can barely take care of myself, much less be responsible for another life. The sad thing is that it's probably the people like you and I that are aware of that moral burden that would make better parents than those that have no idea. Or, to quote Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."

[Blade Azaezel]

I can't wait to be a parent. It'll be the most realistic character builder game ever!!

[phe_de]

Not sure if I am in favour of a parenting license (mostly because I find it hard to implement), but I wouldn't mind child abusers being forcefully sterilized, in severe cases.
If people are unfit to raise children, they shouldn't do it.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Not sure if I am in favour of a parenting license (mostly because I find it hard to implement), but I wouldn't mind child abusers being forcefully sterilized, in severe cases.
If people are unfit to raise children, they shouldn't do it.

That works for me. Licenses/no licenses - not that bothered about the mechanics. The point I was trying to get across is having children should not be considered an automatic right and if people aren't fit parents that right should be removed from them.