No Pass? No Kids.

You need a license to drive a car.

You need a license to fish.

You need a license to breed dogs.

You need a license to own a gun.

Why is it that you don’t need a license for the most important job in the world – the job of breeding children?

Consider this oddity. We have a monetary gift that our government hands out here in Australia called the Baby Bonus. It is essentially a bribe that entices those with little money and few prospects to breed. The bribe is paid as a lump sum of $4000 for each child born but there remains a larger problem: $4000 isn’t a magic wand that makes great parents. $4000 does not cure prospective parents’ drug addictions, criminal behavior, gambling problems or alcoholism either.

When this policy was introduced in 2004 there was evidence that hundreds of births were delayed, by the rescheduling of inducement and cesarean procedures, to ensure that the birth occurred after 1 July 2004 so that the parents were entitled to the Baby Bonus.

Since the beginning of the 2009, the Baby Bonus has gone up to $5185 and due to some abuse it is now being paid in 13 installments, rather than as a lump sum. 13. Unlucky for some but not for new mothers. Why the installments? Because some parents were celebrating their windfall by visisting their dealer, the casino or the pub and not spending it on healthy food, educational items or nappies.

Having children is a basic right, but it is a right that needs to be earned. Or we all suffer.

Introducing a license to have children rub many human rights groups the wrong way but you know what? It would also solve a number of serious problems:

– It will reduce the number of children being born. Sorry, as a planet we’re overpopulated. How can we take on more inhabitants when our governments clearly cannot manage the numbers that are here already? Our world leaders simply don’t have the wisdom required to manage an exploding global population. I think a limit of three children per mother is pretty generous. Even better, two.

How would parenting license or test be administered? God knows. Not easily and with much resistance but it would be easier to create a complex testing system rather than curing the ongoing, serious problems that overpopulation and bad parenting causes. These problems will only get more serious as time goes on.

Wisdom would suggest a test would include the following:

1) Test of overall wellbeing and mental health. A carefully constructed questionnaire would potentially indicate if serious problems were present. Not all problems would surface, but through effective cross-examination, some undoubtably would. You can learn a lot through listening to people express their personal views. Serious problems would include drug and alcohol addiction, violence, self harming, chronic gambling, animal abuse and strong prejudice leaning toward aggression.

2) Simple Question: Why do you want to have children? Answers such as ‘because they’re cute’, ‘I don’t want to work’ or, ‘I’m hoping it will fix my relationship with Bob’ probably won’t see you having kids any time soon.

3) Criminal and Drug History. Any recent ones of a serious nature?

In a perfect world we should each be the ones to decide to have children or not, but living on this shambles of a planet, I truly believe many of us have lost the privilege to make this judgement ourselves. I live opposite a park – my lounge room window faces this park and my window is tinted so no one can see in but we can see out. About once a day a car or truck pulls up and the driver shoots up and then continues on their merry way. Now this saddens me but two things really piss me off. When they throw the syringe out the widow (rare but makes me livid) or, as I have seen on a few occasions, when they let their kids out to play in the park and the parents pull out a glass pipe and fire up some rocks or shoot up. In these instances I feel sick and my fingers automatically go to my telephone and dial 000. Junkies with no respect for parenthood should not have kids and these poor kids should not have junkies for parents. Sorry. And there’s hundreds of thousands of them.

Restricting parents from having children isn’t fair on the children some might say – don’t punish the child for their parents’ acts. Well you know what? These children won’t actually care because they don’t get to be born in the first place. Either they get born with a half decent parent(s) OR they don’t get born at all. The prospective parents test would be extensive but it would not be hard and you’d have to be pretty obviously not ready if you fail. This policy would be good for the individual, the child, the community and the planet.

That’s another example of legislation that can be changed when demanded by one million people who are sick of the sorry state of this planet. We can change the world if we want to but many of us are too busy wondering if we’ve recorded our favorite brain-softening program that’s on TV tonight. Many of us are still sleeping as a race but we ARE rapidly waking up.

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