Should People Need a License to Have Children?
I graduated high school, got married, and had my oldest child when I was 18... And I wasn't ready to raise a child by a long shot! It took me having my 4th child, and being married for the third time, to truly understand what was required of a parent and what being a parent was all about! It was amazing, the day I heard my 3 year old daughter's heartbeat, and realized, truly realized, just what an awesome responsibility I had! As parents, we are responsible for our children's emotional/physical growth and well-being, their moral/spiritual upbringing, their habits, their entire LIVES rest solely on us as parents... What an awesome and challenging responsibility, and the greatest blessing we could ever have!I have 3 main reasons WHY I think parents should need a license to have children:
- It would cut down on teen pregnancy (yes, I was a teen mother myself, and it was NOT the best thing I ever did! It made things twice as hard on myself and my children!) Most teenagers do not have the maturity, patience, nurturing ability, or the financial resources to raise children. Has anyone ever wondered why we can drink at age 21, but can have babies before we're even old enough to drive? Besides that, one can't even get a halfway decent job without a high school education, have a child before you're out of high school makes it even more likely that you'll drop out and not finish your education. What kind of life can we provide for our children without that education and better paying jobs? Not to mention, when we're teenagers, we're still children ourselves... Children have no idea how to raise children! (I could cite several examples of this from my own high school years.. many of the other girls I went to high school with had babies and dropped out!)
- It would perhaps stop the drug and alcohol addicted parents, abusive marriages and other things, from taking their toll on our future generations. We all know someone who was raised in a home with drug/alcohol abuse, or in an abusive home.. if they aren't repeating the cycle, it often takes years of therapy and pure determination to make sure that those cycles aren't repeated! Sadly, oftentimes, those cycles are repeated... and future generations have to work harder to get out of those cycles! What a terrifying prospect our society becomes, when we think what it would be like if EVERYONE were raised in a home with abuse or alcohol/drug addictions!
- I think it would perhaps help prevent poverty and "abusing the system". How many of us know people who have no seeming sense of pride? No ambition? Are happy to just struggle along in poverty or live off the system? Or know people who have lost their pride, ambition, their dreams... and think they can do no better than to live in poverty, struggling along, or think their only option is to live off the system? I'll cite a case of a couple I personally know..
Both are in their late 30's.. they have 2 children. Neither have a high school education, the husband doesn't work (he's extremely overweight, and claims that he can't work ANY job... yet he has no trouble going to the casino and spending the family's last $20!), the wife struggles along at minimum wage jobs... They raised their children like this... Getting welfare, food stamps, state medical, etc... Both of their children have dropped out of high school. Their oldest child, the daughter, is now 18, with a baby of her own.. Living WITH the parents.. and they have since moved the boyfriend in with them (he's 23), and he works a minimum wage job... It's terribly sad.. The daughter doesn't know any better and has no real goals or ambitions of her own, and is now raising her child in the same situation. Their 16 year old son, however, desperately wants to finish high school (but, he quit school to take a job to help support the family, which, in my opinion, is child abuse!), and wants to go to college... His parents often tell him how he can't do that, because... THEY can't afford to pay for college. I have tried to tell him that he can go, all he needs to do is get his diploma or GED and he can get financial aid for school.. He has become so disillusioned and stuck in that cycle, he's starting to lose his dreams... His parents have done he and his sister NO FAVORS...
In closing, these are the 3 main reasons why I think parents should be required to have a license before they have children... I have many more, but I think these are enough. Parenting is not an easy job, it requires a lot of responsibility, love and patience. I just don't think it should be done by anyone and everyone that is capable of reproducing!
Published by Julie Michael
I have 7 beautiful children and I love to write. Beyond that, I love my family, am loyal to my friends, and love to spend time with the people who matter most to me. View profile
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11 Comments
Post a CommentHope your kids don't read that.
a licence wouldnt solve rape, teen pregnancy, abuse, and what would be the requirements? they could have the licence, but it wouldnt stop them from doing what they want
Wow, what a hot button topic. As a father of three, from three mothers (yes, I was very active in my youth) and the custodian of all three of my children, I should have had a license to have children. I am a conservative and feel large government is a waste of our tax money, however, that does not change people in the late teens and twenty's and weekend drinking or a multitude of other reasons. The bottom line, hormones drive us and we WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO CONTROL THEM! I have had this discussion with both my 16 year old daughter and my 19 year old son. My 12 year old isn't really interest in girls yet, I blame Microsoft! lol . Both are well rounded kids that believe that education is the most important aspect of baby making. We recently put my daughter (16) on birth control, even though she has not "gone all the way" it will happen and the last thing we need is a baby in the house. Oh, and I am not ready to be a grandfather. We educate our youth, hand them
We have a discussion going about this same topic on our blog. I agree with the article writer. Plenty of the world's problems could be solved with a licensing process.
To view our discussion go to this link:
http://www.surveymagnet.com/2009/11/should-baby-making-require-a-license/
This is so damm true! I recently found an article on the same topic at http://www.justmeglenny.com/2010/09/license-to-have-babies.html
Just to give you a snippet: I strongly believe that people who can hardly maintain themselves (financially) should not have children. It's hard feeding yourself and adding another mouth to the list doens't make life easier.
Yes, I feel parents should have a license to have children! My husband and I did foster care for 3.5 years and we saw a lot of stupid parenting! Our children's friends have grown up and married or have had children and I see more stupidity...one woman (20) 3 kids has only custody of 1 child and I can see why. She seems to have no common sense...sleeps around and keeps popping out babies meanwhile others are raising them. She already getting a divorce! We had kids who had anger managment issues, emotional dissabilities and such from stupid parenting. Why is it you need a license or safety course for everything else EXCEPT a human life!!???
Is raising a human life NOT more precious and demanding than hunting, fishing, driving etc. Where are our priorities? We have drug addicts who have children born of prostitution, young girls who cannot tell you who the father is because the've slept around sooo much! People who have kids and their homes are FILTHY! (My friend has that problem
i dont agree because what do they do with the children you have if it's required send them to foster homes? Also many children are abused in foster homes, whats the solution? how do you make sure its effective and how do people know if your a good or bad parent? Does the license prove your loving or financially stable? Will we find alot more white people with children because they can afford them (dont freak im white). And how many children are we to be limited too? To many problems in something that seems like a good solution to teen pregancy abuse and more.
I agree with a parenting license. You became a mother at a very young age - when I was 18 I was still in school! Given how many parental failures there are out there (Raymond and Vanessa Jackson are the poster "parents" for our society) something should be done. Also, the so-called competition among women to have as many babies as possible in the shortest amount of time (Think Nadia Suleiman) is ridiculous and contributes nothing to better our society. Breeding's gone the way of the microbes.
A license to have children would get in the way of life. People have children when they're poor and don't have the money to support them but they find a way. Some of the biggest stars and most brilliant minds we have today come from those backgrounds and actually benefited from growing up that way. There's actually a quote, I forgot where it comes from but it goes like this: "It's not what happens to a man but how he responds to it that's the ultimate determining factor in his success or failure."
Licenses, in my opinion, would have to be issued by personality types and how often do people know who is or isn't a child molester? How many closet drug addicts are there out there? You hear about a guy being a rapist and the media talks to his neighbors and they all say he was a great guy, they never thought he could do something like that. There are so many things that affect children negatively that there aren't really anyways of foretelling without infringing upon peoples right to pr
perverts? I'm not so sure that's what the license would be protecting people from. i think irresponsibility is the more accurate term. I'm no parent, and I'm certainly not old enough to have kids, but i think i understand enough when i say i think the license has some fatal flaws. however much i support the license doesn't change the fact that those flaws exist. sigh... too bad...