parental licensure: a case for a more intelligent design

Running Head: PARENTAL LICENSURE 1

Parental Licensure: A Case for a More Intelligent Design

Andrew Savage

Bryant & Stratton College

Eng 101: Research and Writing

Mrs. Olmstead

5 Aug, 2013

PARENTAL LICENSURE 2

Imagine a society in which people intelligently breed for a

more perfect design. Such a design being that of the vessel known

as the human body at optimal performance and appearance. Imagine

a world free of terrible art, prisons, gangs, mafia, corrupt

government officials, a need for charity, hunger, disease,

genetic disorders, and crime epidemics. We live in the future and

yet we constantly pray for something better to happen tomorrow,

only to find tomorrow living in today. How are we to continue

onward toward some greater good if we allow the optimal of

opportunities to go on unreceived? Imagine a world free of child

abuse and neglect. As the course of human evolution continues are

we not doing a disservice to ourselves and future heirs of the

planet if we are not more selective and intelligent in the

process of procreation? Parental licensing may offer the perfect

alternative to combat and prevent mankind’s corruption of the

natural order. Parental licensing will aid the nation and world

in prevention of child abuse and lower the poverty levels.


The breakdown of social order is pushing the public and

private sectors to take more reactionary responses each year.

Mankind’s corruption is pushing the closing hand of statism while

the factory lines of America come to a rusty halt. The public

sector is purchasing billions of dollars for goods from overseas,

while using tax payer dollars to do so, and the private sector

continues to request bail outs from the public. It may be no

surprise that some of you may not be able to yet comprehend

precisely what is causing the disappearing American Dream and

unemployment to remain indefinitely rigged at such great heights.

No, it is a shame that words among Americans seem to be receding.

Words such as libertarianism and objectivism seem to be fading

out of the minds and memories of all too many confident

Americans. Such words are being choked out of the shrinking

circles of intellectuals and are being subverted by statist

subjectivism, not dissimilar to the rule of Medieval era

oligarchy.

The breakdown of social order is occurring and it is pushing

the public sector to take more reactionary responses each year.

As children here and there commit suicide and homicide; as


children continue to drop out of high school and college; and as

the standards of education and social wellbeing become more

reliant on the meager solutions of the state, we are becoming a

society that is less laissez-faire and more like the statist

regimes our forefather fought against in the last world war. As

the free market continues to struggle to remain free, the US

Constitution is losing its strength as it is being gunned down by

corruption rooted in the bought-out legislative and executive

branches every day. The present public sector, with all of its

alleged principles and failed solution has overlooked the problem

of population control for the ends of higher intelligence, while

it continues to raise taxes on the living and the dead. The

inheritance of the world and legacy of every man and woman are

being lost to the all powerful, ever present, and corrupted

tentacles of a corrupt public sector that is not self-sustaining.

Like an all-consuming cancerous tumor, the public sector appears

to be keeping free men, the private sector, alive just enough to

garnish an absurd portion of the fruits of Man’s labor. As

educational standards are lowered, as the rest of the developed

and developing nations of the world continue to catch up to and


out pace America, and as Americans are taxed blind there are many

solutions to fixing that which is broken. The most effective way

to restore the constitution and prosperity of America is to go

after the source of American problems, unguided procreation and

unlicensed parenting.

There are currently seven billion people living on Earth, of

which, according to Paul Ehrlich (Richard G. , 2013), can only

support a population of five hundred million to one billion two

hundred million humans. However, because of the advances made in

technology and the disparity of wealth, many people of the

developed nations are unaware of global poverty and ecological

desertification. In other words, those of decent standards of

living – those with power to change – are all too often sitting

idly by precarious with the approach of impending doom of a

future generation not so far beyond the horizon if we continue

this course. Some blame capitalism for the current degradation of

civilization and biosphere, while others blame statist theories

like communism or fascism. Where such people place the blame, I

see little at fault. I do not see faults in ever evolving socio-

economic and government theories, principles nor practices. Nay,


I see the fault in one commonly overlooked problem, procreation

and parenting- the root of mankind.

The thinkers and intellectuals have been outbred by a cheap

and uneducated labor force that has had its occupations

outsourced to nations overseas. The problem is not specifically

that mankind procreates, but that the seed of mankind continues

to blindly root itself into the worse possible times and places.

It is not that mankind believes that he should be allowed to

breed freely with whomever he pleases simply because of his

ability to do so, but that he believes that he can get away with

such blind and disorganized conduct, while the biosphere teeters

of the brink of destruction.

When gardening or farming, why does mankind use the best

soil? Why does he use fresh water? Why does mankind spend so much

energy cultivating the best seeds? Is it not to establish a more

productive and fruitious crop? Surely a man’s farm would become a

field of weeds and pests if he let his fences go on unmaintained

and allowed crops to breed themselves into fruition. Such a

farmer would be hard pressed to find enough fruits of his labor


to feed his family, let alone meet the demands of the farmer’s

market.

If a farmer cannot afford to allow his crops to freely

produce themselves, then what makes anyone think that mankind can

afford to sit idly by free of intelligent procreation while he

exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet? With one bad war, or

electromagnetic storm from the sun, the planet could easily lose

six to five billion people from a loss of power to operate

technology. After all it appears that man only has one planet in

all of the universe capable of safely harboring his natural state

of life. Because of this self evident state of affairs, such a

planet must be treated as a sacred sanctuary as it is an oasis

among the endless and vast emptiness of space. To carry on with

the good health and wealth provided to us by our planet we must

develop a means to intelligent design. A means to intelligent

procreation is that of a parental licensing program.

To bring about the end of child abuse, poverty and

malnutrition, I propose that we stunt the growth of individual

and corporate welfare by screening our citizens for their


aptitude to be suitable parents. “We forbid people from

practicing medicine, law, pharmacy, or psychiatry unless they

have satisfied certain licensing requirements. Society’s decision

to regulate just these activities is not ad hoc. The decision to

restrict admission to certain vocations and to forbid some people

from driving is based on an eminently formulated rationale. We

require drivers to be licensed because driving an auto is an

activity which is potentially harmful to others, safe performance

of the activity requires a certain competence.” (Lafollete, 1980)

This is not only the way by which society ought to be ran

ideally, this is the way by which society is ran.

Many people claim that parenting is a learning experience,

but many of such people lack the common sense of understanding

the meaning behind the phrase “learning experience” as if you

become a parent as a blank slate, void of a minimum of eighteen

years of life experience, and you learn everything as you go.

Such is not the case as it is imperative that all potential

parents learn to balance a checkbook and hold a career with a

decent paying salary. Let us end the vicious cycle of inhumane


treatment of children by placing the appropriate restraints on

those deemed potentially harmful to offspring.

Many people who have not read the U.S. Constitution, who

would advocate that parental licensure is somehow morally wrong,

claim that everyone has an inherent right to produce offspring

and become a parent . I remind you that your rite of passage to

become a parent is neither a birth right, a constitutional

freedom, nor is it a guaranteed right protected under any bill

provided by state or federal law. “Slander and human sacrifice

are prohibited by law; both could result from unrestricted

exercise of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Thus, even

if people have these rights, they may sometimes be limited in

order to protect innocent people. Consequently, even if people

had a right to have children, that right might also be limited in

order to protect innocent people in the case, children.”

(Lafollete, 1980)

To deny potential perpetrators, or people who are

inadequate, the rite of passage to procreate will provide a

better shape for society as a whole. No longer will the tax


burden be as high, and no longer will monsters be permitted to

breed. The amount of money needed in programs such as welfare and

child protective services will drop, fines will be paid, and less

children will be exposed to the evils of child abuse and

depravation. “The fact that mistakes are made does not and

should not lead us to abandon attempts to determine competence.

“Prior to adoption the candidates must first formally apply

to adopt a child. The applicants are then subjected to an

exacting home study to determine whether they really want to have

children and whether they are capable of caring for and rearing

them adequately. No one is allowed to adopt a child until the

administrators can reasonably predict that the person will be an

adequate parent. The results of these procedures are impressive.

Despite the trauma children often face before they are finally

adopted, they are five times less likely to be abused than

children reared by their biological parents.” (Lafollete, 1980)

No citizen of our society shall be permitted to procreate and/or

parent until they have completed a rite of passage proving that

they have the potential, capability to raise a child in a

peaceful and prosperous environment. No child should be forced


into a slum, into a broken household, or under the guidance of

indecent parents.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “boys raised

in fatherless families are roughly seven times more likely to

engage in criminal behavior, and 2.7 times more likely to serve

serious prison time, than boys raised in a two parent home.

Children raised without their fathers in the home are twice as

likely to drop out of school than children raised with their

fathers, and girls raised in a fatherless environment are much

more likely to have children out of wedlock, thus continuing the

cycle of poverty and pathology.” (History, 2013) At the given

rate, more children are likely to become victims of maltreatment,

even if the population growth is zero. “Every year 3.3 million

reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving

nearly 6 million children. The United States has the worst record

among the industrialized nations- losing five children every day

due to abuse-related deaths.” (USA, 2013)

“About 80% of 21 year olds that were abused as children met

criteria for at least one psychological disorder. The estimated


annual cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States for

2008 is $124 billion.” (Engster, 2010) Imagine what it would be

like reducing psychological disorders among future adults.

Imagine the cost of saving children changing from a deficit to a

form of revenue generated by a Department of Procreative

Licensure. Would you be willing to pay a small fee, stand in a

line, and take an aptitude test for your future child? If you

believe that mankind is a species of common sense and decency,

then where do we forge a rationale separating man from the beast?

We shall inevitably choose to forge the difference between man

and beast by starting with the beginning, conception of human

life. “Perpetrators of child abuse or neglect are most often the

child’s own parents. According to NCANDS, in 2005, 79.4 percent

of perpetrators were parents and 6.8 percent were other

relatives. The largest remaining categories of perpetrators were

the unmarried partner of a child’s parent (3.8 percent) and other

perpetrators (4.1 percent).” (USA, 2013) Nearly eighty percent of

child abuse can be reduced by preventing potential perpetrators

from making their mark(s) if we begin screening potential parents

today. I propose that we launch a licensing program in which all


viable people, beginning at age eighteen, are required to take an

aptitude test determining their suitability as parents. If any

candidate fails the test, then they may take an exam again after

completion of a compacted and concise course in parenting. If

the candidate again fails the test, then they may be given the

right to appeal for a third examination. If anyone becomes

pregnant, or causes someone to become pregnant who is not

permitted to be a parent then the baby will go to a parent with a

license. In such cases, the biological progenitor will be charged

monthly fees for the maintenance of the child, and the said

biological parent will be rendered infertile if they fail to

acquire a license within one to three years (as directed by a

court of law).

Let us tackle high taxes, low wages, unemployment and other

such ails at the source. Who brewed these problems if not bad

parents? Implementing and enforcing a criteria, parental

licensing will improve the bedrock foundation of our society by

denying monsters, and the ill-equipped, the rite of passage to

procreate and raise children. Mating and parenting are privileges


that ought to be purely reserved for those members who know what

they are doing.

“The dependences upon governmental authority is simply the

flip side of neighborhood isolation, says the Rockford

Institute’s Scott Richert. The CTV-Angus Reid poll asked

Canadians to agree or disagree with the statement, ‘I would call

the police on the neighbor’s children, if I saw them doing

something illegal.’ Fully 64% said that they would. ‘Now these

are the neighbor’s children,’ observes Mr. Richert of the

Rockford Institute in Illinois. ‘First it’s obviously considered

normal that the neighbor’s kids could be breaking the law. And

second, rather than shouting out, ‘I’m going to tell your folks’

or actually telling their parents, the vast majority would call

the cops.” (Woodard, J. 1996) As we understand what actions to

take against troubled minors, how much do we understand the

actions to take when we discover the source of such troubled

minors, the parents? What if you called the cops on abusive child

guardians to no avail? Does a mark need to be made on the child

to separate the beast from the child? An objective society would


prevent its violent criminal from ever having the luxury of being

in the same household as a human child.

Not all people who harm children and spouses are placed in

cages, prisons, many of them go on freely sometimes under the

same roof as their victim(s). What is inhumane or immoral about

preventing such abusers from producing offspring that they,

themselves, will behave inhumanely toward?

All too often there are people; driven by fear, frustration,

or other such emotions; who make fallacious testimonies against

groups such as the state. “The family has already been stripped

of many of its responsibilities and protections. Parents are now

threatened by state intrusion and bureaucratic interference. An

army of various social workers, educational bureaucratic, and

therapeutic specialists insist that they know best and that

children should be nurtured, disciplined, instructed, and

socialized in accordance with their own worldviews.” (Mohler,

2005) Such people fall short in carrying any weight with biased,

or subjective, testimony as their assertions are not predicated

on objective and non-biased rationality. The forementioned


testimony serves, not to raise an awareness of bad parenting but,

to insight fear and animosity against people who work with the

state. May I remind you that such states’ personnel work to

ensure that all American children are provided adequate parents,

decent homes beneficial learning environments, healthcare,

nutrition, etcetera. Therefore each statesperson must work

evermore diligently to ensure that their worldviews are objective

and non-biased, as well as shared as common views among all of

society. The rationality of social workers, educators, therapy

specialists, etcetera, is not one that harbors the desire to

place children and bad parents into concentration camps, from my

subjective worldview, there are other remedies that are objective

and more approachable to use in preventing America from becoming

a badland of broken families, such as a federal parental

licensing program. Becoming a parent is neither a right, nor a

privilege reserved for society’s elite, it is a rite of passage

granted by society, and for members of society, to pro-create the

next generation of Mankind with the aims of improving living

standards, with the aims of fostering a life of security, liberty

and prosperity for all members of mankind. What are we, but


simple beasts of burden, if we choose to allow people, especially

those impoverished, to breed like rabbits on an island with

finite resources?

The way that the parental licensing program will work is

simple. “Whatever moral right to raise a child there might be is

defeated when the parent-to-be is significantly likely to cause

the child substantial and avoidable harm, or, of course, if the

parent does cause the child substantial and avoidable harm, or,

of course, if the parent does cause the child such harm. Those

that should be refused a license to parent a child are those who

are likely, in parenting, to harm the child. Those that should

have a parenting license revoked are those who do harm the

child.” (Cohen, A., 2011) Make no mistake, parenting is a

dangerous job that takes a lot of power and knowledge, thus

requiring a high degree of aptitude. “Since doctors, lawyers, and

the like are in positions to harm those they seek to serve and

there are testable competencies for their fields, it follows that

they should be licensed.” (Cohen, A., 2011) While I encourage

that all potential parents, everyone age eighteen and it is not

necessary that people apply until they conceive a child. “With a


parental licensing program, if you get pregnant, you go to get a

license to raise the child or you decide to give up the child.

You violate no law by becoming pregnant. Once pregnant, you

violate no law until the child is born- and only if you decide to

raise it without getting a license. And perhaps you are allowed

to take the licensing test multiple times if you fail at first.

Perhaps you do so after taking parental classes.” (Cohen, A.,

2011)

With a world population above seven billion souls, or five

billion above Earth’s carrying capacity (Richard G. , 2013), it

should be unlawful to produce more lives without the merit of a

license. “It should be illegal to knowingly create a life that

will be spent in pain, and/or that will be severely substandard.”

(Tittle, P., 2004) The common response among sociopaths and

psychopaths follows along the lines of, “Well it’s not as if

people plan it, you know- usually, it just happen.’ Excuse me? It

is not possible to create life by accident—men don’t accidently

ejaculate into vaginas and women don’t accidently catch some

ejaculate with their vaginas. As for failed contraception, there

is morning-after contraception and abortion.” (Tittle, P., 2004)


Every day that we post pone the inevitable choice to enforce a

parental licensure, more humans will continue to be born out of

wedlock, more children will be harmed by their own parents, and

some will die. “Most of us have seen broken kids, kids who didn’t

get what they needed at a critical stage in their development, so

they go through life thinking the world owes them something. And

indeed we do. But sadly, tragically, we can’t give it to them

because that critical window of time has passed. We can’t go back

and provide the baby with the nutrients required for growth, we

can’t go back and give the child the safety and attention that

would have led to a secure personality. Every year, millions of

people we have created so carelessly are being starved, beaten or

otherwise traumatized.” (Tittle, P., 2004)

“In 2006, 4,266,00 children were born in the United States.

Jack Westman estimates that roughly 4 percent of these children

were born to unfit parents. The Family Stress Checklist places

the number much higher, identifying 17.6 percent of adults as

potential abusers. If parent were subject to income tests,

perhaps as many as 25 percent would have their children taken

away from them at birth- or over one million children per year in


the United States.” (Engster, 2010) While displacing as many as

one million children per year may seem like a lot, it is very

likely that the adoption rate would increase provided the given

circumstances. The state could provide tax incentives to licensed

couples who adopt. The state would fine all unlicensed couples

who become parents upon the birth of the child. Unfit parents

shall be rendered infertile when they fail a final appeal to

acquire parental licenses. Those seeking to become parents shall

be given three chances to pass a parental aptitude test. They

shall also have the right to attend a certification course and a

right to an appeal.

The state has thus far proven that it does not currently

discriminate against racial, or ethnic, groups. According to

some, “the state might also subtly discriminate against certain

racial or ethnic groups by requiring financial, education, and

language requirements that would effectively disqualify large

numbers of individuals from these groups from obtaining parenting

licenses.” (Engster, 2010) May I remind you of progressive

measures such as welfare, affirmative action, the Bill of Rights,

the Civil Rights Movement, etcetera. To say that the state, or


any affiliated organization, discriminates against ethnicity due

to requiring particular financial, educational, and language

comprehension statuses is to insinuate that some races, or

ethnicities, are inferior to others. When people make such claims

as the one I have referenced, they are propagating racism in so

much as they are postulating that certain ethnic groups are

financially, educationally, and psychologically incompetent.

Parental licensing is not an attack on race, education, nor

the psyches of citizen. But if it must be an attack at all, then

it is a countermeasure deployed to keep children out of harm’s

reach. “Most states require prospective parents to meet various

criteria before they adopt a child. According to parental

advocates, screening potential adoptive parents but not potential

biological parents establishes an unfair double standard. Either

all parents should be screened and (given a chance to be)

licensed or none should be.” (Engster, 2010) How long will

society prosper on behlf of all mankind, in the course of

unguided reproductive practices?


“In 1960 about 3.5% of the total high risk group of 15 to 25 year

old males were bron out of wedlock, and nearly 30% had parents

who were divorced. By 1994 the illegitimacy proportion in this

group had risen from 3.5% to 13.4%, and the proportion left

fatherless by divorce had more than doubled.” (Lykken) The

nuclear American family is breaking down, falling apart, and the

longer we wait to deploy countermeasures, the more difficult it

will become to heal our universal culture.

“The Search Institute (Minneapolis) found that youngsters in

grades 6-8 who were living in one-parent families were twice as

likely as those from two-parent families to use illegal drugs, to

be promiscuously sexually active, to engage in vandalism, to skip

school frequently, and to steal things from stores. The single-

parent children were also twice as likely to have used a weapon

at least twice to get something from another person, to have been

in trouble with police, to have been in trouble with the police,

to have been physically or sexually abused by an adult, and to

plan on quitting school before (high school) graduation.”

(Lykken) We cannot permit, our local, national and global

communities to continue to break down. Despite that we are able,


at a young age, to reproduce offspring does not necessarily mean

that we can lawfully have sex and become parents prior to

reaching age eighteen. Just as there is an age requirement to

copulate, there must also be a license requirement to ensure that

only those who are competent may utilize their reproductive

organs to become parents.

“Prior to World War II, most developed countries maintained

what amounted to a tradition of parental licensure. The ancient

taboo against out of-wedlock births led most young people to

understand that if they wished to produce and keep a baby, they

must first get married, and for that a license was required from

the state.” You see, it has been the societal norm among

developed nations to first marry, attain a license, and then

proceed to reproduce offspring. Being born out of wedlock is a

shame and must be prevented by enforcing a parental licensure

program that only permits self-supporting couple, widows and

widowers with sufficient means, to become parents.

Some may argue that all people have a inherent right to

reproduce offspring, free of government laws and regulations.


Some may argue that there is not an objective, non-biased, way to

measure good or adequate parenting, and yet we know bad parenting

when we see it. Some argue that to allow the government to limit

parenting and reproduction to only those found to be suitable

parents is asinine and not realistic. I am here to remind you,

the audience, of the of the gravity of the situation and to

propose that reproduction neither a private affair, nor is it a

right laid out in the framework of the nation’s constitution or

Bill of Rights. What brand of cereal you decide to eat in the

morning is a private affair, and even then there are government

regulation set in place to protect the consumer and producer.

What clothing you decide to put on your body is a private affair

as well. Even then, the government is there to ethically regulate

the industry to protect the consumer and producer. While reported

cases of child abuse and neglect are relatively low, society

still has the responsibility to ensure that no one suffers such

abuse by implementing a federal parental licensing program that

ensures that abusive members of society are filtered out of the

system by denying such members the right to reproduce and parent

children. Implementing and enforcing a parental license program


will motivate more parents to learn and take the appropriate

measures for raising their children.


References

Woodard, J. (1996). ‘Hey—have you got a license for that kid?’

(Cover story). Alberta Report/ Newsmagazine, 23 (41), 30.

Fletcher, T.A. (2000). Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and

Violent Behavior (Book). American Journal on Addictions, 9(2), 122-

143.

Engster, D. (2010). The Place of Parenting within a Liberal

Theory of Justice: The Private Parenting Model, Parental

Licensing, or Public Parenting Support? Social Theory & Practice,

36(2), 233-262.

Tittle, P. (2004, Oct 2). We license plumbers and pilots -- why not parents?.

Retrieved from

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/We-license-

plumbers-and-pilots-why-not- parents-1155270.php

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/We-license-plumbers-and-pilots-why-not-

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/We-license-plumbers-and-pilots-why-not-


Cohen, A. (2011, Dec 27). Licensing parents. Retrieved from

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/licensing-

parents-2/

Lykken, D. (n.d.). The Case for Parental Licensure. In D. Lykken.

History, E. o. (2013). License and Registration, Please. End of

History, 1(2), 57 - 63. Retrieved from

www.endofhistory.com/eoh/archive/v1i2/licensing.pdf

Lafollete, H. (1980). Licensing Parents. Philosophy & Public Affairs ,

9(2).

Mohler, A. (2005, Apr 28). Should Parents Be Licensed? An Ominous New

Debate. Retrieved from Albert Mohler:

http://www.albertmohler.com/2005/04/28/should-parents-be-

licensed-an-ominous-new%20-debate-2/

Project, T. S. (2011). Trends in US Corrections. State and Federal

Prison Populations, 1- 7. Retrieved from

www.sentencingproject.org

Richard, G. (2013). Human Carrying Capacity of Earth. Retrieved from Colorado Mesa: http://home.coloradomesa.edu/~grichard/Environmental/richard2002.html

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/licensing-parents-2/

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/licensing-parents-2/


USA, C. H. (2013, August 12). National Child Abuse Statistics. Retrieved

from Child Help USA:

http://www.childhelp-usa.com/pages/statistics

parental licensure: a case for a more intelligent design

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