Should Having Children Be Something You Earn and Not a Right?

Society today has created groups of people who have children because they are careless, as well as those who have children purely to get additional child benefits. Is our future one where being a parent might be a status that you have to earn.

This article poses an ethical question, and is written from the viewpoint of living in the UK, but it also applies for the most part to the USA as well as other countries.

Up to the last 40 years or so, most children were born to married parents, or at least parents that cared about them.

In recent years, especially in the UK, there are people who live off benefits provided by the government, and there are now whole families who do not work and just live off the state, at the expense of the taxpayer.

With increasing numbers, children in schools have no incentive to study for exams, because when they leave school, they are going to register for benefits, just like everyone else in their family.

This alone is a sad state of affairs, and one at least which the current government is trying to rectify, trying to close the loopholes that allow people to avoid working for the whole of their lives and to just live for free. Their benefits include free housing, as well as living expenses, and of course child benefits.

There are some people who have children, purely to claim benefits, and the children receive little or no love or caring from those parents, they are just left to watch television or to roam the streets, to be out of their parent's way, while they do drugs and waste their lives away.

Some women by the time they reach their mid twenties have five or more children, by as many fathers, and the government is paying everything for them.

Many of these children who have not been nurtured by their parents are disruptive at school, and suffer from emotional and behavioral problems, often due to mental defects because of their mother's abuses of drugs and alcohol while they were pregnant.

Right now, the numbers of children like this are increasing, which is of great concern to some people who are far thinking enough to consider what is going to happen in another twenty years.

Not only can any government cope with an ever increasing demand for benefits for the masses who choose not to work and to live off benefits, but the increasing numbers of children with learning difficulties, and with no concept of what it means to live in a normal society is also very worrying.

As many of us have grown older we have realized that we are very much like our parents, and we bring our children up very much like we were brought up, with many of the same standards and morals, and ideally the same or a better lifestyle.

But what of those children who have never had a normal upbringing?

These are growing up to think that it's normal to do nothing all day, to watch television, play computer games, do drugs, steal things, wander the streets, and to have children of their own without and consideration for their future.

Unless this increasing peril to society as we know it can be halted, we might be faced with a future where life is very different, and our world will be filled with an ever growing number of individuals who are virtually unaware of the need for the "normality" that is the basis for society to function.

As a result, we could be faced with a situation where society itself; begins to break down, as the numbers of those who are poorly educated, who do not work, and who are effectively misfits in society, grows to an unprecedented level.

Should we be in danger of this happening, then do we need to ask whether only those people who can satisfy certain requirements are made eligible to have children?

These would be people who can show that they are living a lifestyle which is suitable for the raising of children. That might exclude those who do not have a long term partner/spouse, who are unemployed and have never worked, almost certainly would exclude teenagers.

Does it sound like I am proposing an Orwellian type society where the government controls everything that you do, including permission to become pregnant? It's a scary thought isn't it, but what are the alternatives should the population get out of control and the numbers of the younger generations who have not been brought up correctly increase to a dangerous level?

One obvious solution in theory is to promote the need for ALL parents to educate their children in the home, not only to teach them to read and write, but to teach them about society, how to treat other people, about respect for others and their property.

It's the lack of these basic rules of life that is the foundation of many of the problems that I am trying to highlight, but just how do you educate parents who don't care, and how do you enforce it.

I really hope that this sets people thinking about the present problems that we have in our society, and the future problems that are likely to face us all if something doesn't change, and soon.

Your feedback is most welcome, and I think that you will agree that something needs doing about this NOW rather than in ten years time when it might already be too late.