Licensing parents

The idea of licensing parents is quite new, but the ideas of promoting eugenics or discouraging dysgenics have historical roots, as does the idea of producing many children for the good of society—without regard to their genetic quality.
History
The idea of controlling births or the type of children being allowed into the society undoubtedly precedes the Spartan practice in ancient Greece, where newborns were inspected by soldiers to determine whether they looked sound and strong, if not they were placed on a hill and exposed to the elements to die. Those who were deemed worthy were trained and became the bravest warriors of the time.
The Soviets, after losing twenty million men in the two world wars and their revolution and civil war, wanted as many babies as possible. Their ‘hero mothers’, who had given birth to at least ten children, were acclaimed as ideals for the society. So the Soviets put their emphasis on quantity not quality.
Nazi Germany proposed and carried out ambitious programs for preventing dysgenics by those they considered to be poor hereditary risks including: criminals, degenerates, dissidents, the feeble-minded, homosexuals, the insane, and others considered mentally or physically weak.
Eugenics
At the Second International Eugenics Conference in 1921, Eugenics was defined as “the self-direction of human evolution". If we accept this definition, eugenics can refer to nature or nurture. Previous attempts at eugenics have emphasized ‘nature’—the hereditary aspects of controlling human evolution. Recent ideas are emphasizing the ‘nurture’ aspects, the environmental influences on the child.
The modern debate
The next stage of the eugenics debate deals with the environmental factors. Dr. Hugh LaFollette, a philosophy professor at the University of Southern Florida, started this newer aspect of the debate. Dr. LaFollette, whose specialty is ethics, wrote an article titled “Licensing Parents” for the academic journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1980. Dr. LaFollette lists a number of factors to be considered in attempting to reduce the hundreds of thousands of children who are annually subjected to physical and mental abuse. He discusses how the state has the power to license a number of activities and to make many other activities illegal. He completes the article answering the proposed objections to the idea. His plea is for minimal, not ideal, parenting competencies.
In 1994 a psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Westman, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School, who has written a number of books on parenting and children, published. Licensing Parents: Can We Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. Like LaFollette his concern is for the children and parents were free to parent as long as they were not likely to hurt their children and prevent them from becoming contributing members of society. He also deals with the civil rights of children to have adequate parenting. He estimates that every competently parented child is worth one million dollars to the economy through production and taxes, his estimate for incompetently parented children is a cost of two million dollars to the society. His requirements for a license would be that the person be an adult and promise not to hurt the child. He expresses a concern about teenage parents.
The most recent addition to the debate includes many of the ideas of LaFollette and Westman but tie them in with other world problems, particularly overpopulation.

See Also
*Mother Hero
*Nazi Eugenics

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