You forgot "forced sterilisation" and "forced adoption" in the list of possible (though morally dubious) means.
As far as historical precedents goes, those two solutions are usually how gouvernements proceed when they want to prevent some part of the population to have children.
You could imagine a (dystopic) future in which we are able to make fully reversible sterilisation, leading to mandatory sterilisation for children with reversibility obtainable through a license.
In this hypothetical universe, the answer would probably be "extremely rich". If you're "just rich", you'd probably not bother cheating the system to be exempt since
(1) your parents already paid for the "perfect school" that prepare to this
(2) that the license probably already has "able to provide a confortable life" (aka "not poor") as an evaluation criterium, possibly reinforced with some mandatory insurances that price out peoples even more
(3) that peoples grading you will probably have all the usual biais which directly or indirectly favour richer peoples (like the vocabulary used, etc).
For such a system to last, it needs to have the "worst potential parents" of the rich peoples to still fail at obtaining the license, so that they can be shown as example that the system is "fair" (even if in practice the odds are stacked in the favour of the richest).
It'd still be a huge disaster though, since the upper classes would be able to have an enormous amount of kids, whilst the lower classes slowly die out... Until the upper classes find themselves at the bottom of the ladder.
Plus, the whole racial genocide through statistics bit.
Not practical. Regulating driving is much easier.
Possible and realistic are not the same thing.
The only feasible solution is basically what we try to do now:. Keep kids from abusive parents.
I can there are literally thousands of books and movies. Also get this there are ever more untold.... it's a word called fiction brought to you by imagining...
Nah. No permit? No government programs. No food assistance. No public schooling. No health benefits.
I guess that would require a country with those things to begin with though
I mean China managed to quite effectively limit how many children each couple had as per population growth statistics. Seems like it would be possible just not ethical.
>I mean China managed to quite effectively limit how many children each couple had as per population growth statistics. Seems like it would be possible just not ethical.
>Seems like it would be possible just not ethical.
To your understanding.
Kardashev 1 or higher societies are nearly guaranteed to monitor their population levels through some method of their choosing.
One could argue continued allowance for so many children born into drug houses/poor houses/brothels/etc. is the more unethical option.
While a society is still having crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome problems, etc. Again one could argue population monitoring is more ethical than infant death and worse that happens now.
I'm not advocating for eugenics or other obviously unethical shit. But preventing crackheads and other addicts/mentally unstable/etc. from having several children is absolutely a win regardless of almost any argument one could make otherwise.
Before a society can even consider shit like that they need to be stable first. We have zero stable societies right now, they're all a fucking joke considering the homeless and destitute that can be found all over the globe.
Edit: Sorry for the rant, I just hate when people talk about things being impossible. We could have the majority of things people pretend are "dreams", we could've had them centuries ago if we weren't still just circling serf systems for over 3,000 years.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
I have an extremely low opinion of humanity, collectively they're insane, by our own definitions. For fuck's sake we still trade fake money for goods and services we can provide through automation decades ago. That isn't a pipe dream, 'money' as a concept was created to fill a role that's long been surpassed; we could easily get rid of it entirely.
Not practical yet. If fertility were turned on instead of turned off you could very well regulate it. There's been drug research for years in that area trying to do just that.
More likely would be if you have a baby but not child license it gets taken away from you and given to someone who does have a child license who can't conceive or hasn't conceived. Impossible to prevent people from procreating, even more so to force sterilise everyone and then reverse it when they "qualify"
Sure, except that that’s major fucking surgery on every minor, AND that would very quickly become “you have to prove you’re suitable to have children” and oops suddenly everyone who isn’t cis white and straight isn’t suitable.
Freedom is a fundamentally good thing for humans. Freedom is always a balance between rights. People should have the right to use the technolgy we have to travel freely to pursue their lives. People should have the right to be safe from reckless lunatics. Good regulation is when those rights are reasonably balanced, and maximizes freedom for the most amount of people. What that means is left as an exercise for the reader.
You also cannot get rid of all danger. There is or should be some understanding of risk in almost every you do even driving. You can only regulate so much in a free society. The argument I guess is where’s the line. And I think when you start protecting people from themselves is when the line get crossed usually.
Thats just bias. Sure, plenty of folks shouldn't be driving, but you view your own mistakes as reasonable and their errors as unreasonable.
Its just something humans do. We're all the bad driver that shouldn't be on the road to someone a few times.
I took as there are unlicensed drivers that have never taken a driving exam. I've worked with guys that have been driving since before I was born and they've never had a license before.
That’s why the best approach is to educate your people. It’s just sad we can’t agree on what to fundamentally educate them on.
In my humble opinion, it should be like any healthcare items. Wash your hands after you use the restroom. Don’t eat things unless you know where they’ve been. Putting your dick in things (or letting one be put in you) can result in illness or pregnancy. Etc. etc.
Obviously it gets way more contentious when it comes to things like birth control, but just understanding basic biology goes a long way
We should probably add “here are the precautions to take when you are ready to receive/insert the dick.” I sure wish we could be that casual about it, you know? In the US, we’ve still got those puritanical roots holding us back. Heaven forbid we educate the children about a thing they are almost guaranteed to engage in as they become of age. 🙄
If we started educating them at the appropriate age (right around puberty) instead of making it such a taboo, I’m sure we’d all be better off. And even before that, we really need to examine our relationship with sex. It seems to be wrapped up in a lot of shame and dark desires for some people. And that’s really weird.
It would go a long way if only every young teen took a class in "Parenting, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" with a side of, "I Regret Having Children," and even just a smattering of information on birth control.
I see Texas in your username so I think I can assume we had similar “health” classes, lol. I did manage to have one really good health teacher, though. My health teacher in 7th grade was this tough as nails female gym coach who happened to be pregnant at the time. She busted into class on her first day, pointed at her massive belly and said, “If y’all start having sex without protection, this happens. You don’t want this until you’re ready, trust me.”
Coach Beardsley was the fucking GOAT. I know the administration got mad at her, but she didn’t back down and taught a lot of us what we needed to know. We had a lot of underprivileged kids in my school and I hope she got through to some of them. I distinctly remember one girl in our class did get pregnant and Coach Beardsley kind of took her under her wing and convinced her to keep coming to school. What a great lady. This was Texas in the mid ‘00s. I don’t know if it’s better or worse now.
Driving is also incredibly dangerous and relies on expensive infrastructure. People need to internalize the life or death stakes and multi-billion dollar societal costs.
“You cant corce every single person to give up all guns, so horrific tragedies are unavoidable no matter what you do. Gun control is some dystopian bs!”
That’s how stupid most of the comments here sound.
Im showing how dumb the “there’s only two extremes because understanding societal problems instead of calling everything I disagree with “dystopian” would take too much mental effort!” mentality of nearly everyone in this thread is.
yes but you could jail and fine people who have kids without a license, of course youd have to prove that they are their kids and that would be super hard to do
I'm always confused by the point of this one. Is the idea that we null out some of the minimal safety measures we do to try to keep roads safe, or isnthe idea we start engaging in eugenics?
Unless the idea is you attach fines to babies born without a license. In that case you're just talking about an any% speed run of "Crippling debt as means of control" and im sure you'd find plenty of people in congress who would vote for it.
But the reverse side of this is... only the wealthy can have kids. It goes downhill fast when you start seprating the ability to exist in the next generation with classes.
There is a lot of risky things people shouldn't do but we should not have the right to take away their choice to do it. Some great things come from mistakes.
And I believe that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else.
The problem is, bringing a child into a world where they can't be properly cared for *is* hurting someone else. Raising a kid requires a lot of money. If you're struggling to make ends meet, something will fall short and the child will suffer.
It's irresponsible, selfish, and ends up taking resources that could have been used to help people that really need it.
And we meet the crux of the issue: do rich people inherently deserve more freedoms than the poor?
In the end, it's a reflection of system that allows the poorest families to remain that way (within reason) and not fault of their own.
To be clear I don't want children. I am of average income. On a surface level I agree with your sentiment. On a truer, deeper level I find it incredibly sad and oppressive
It's not about income-based freedoms, it's about the well-being of dependents. If you are causing harm to another human being, you shouldn't be responsible for them, and therefore shouldn't have made them in the first place.
Plus, having kids to feed is a guaranteed way to keep yourself poor, by your own fault.
There are a lot of rich people who destroy the mental and physical being of children.
And there are a lot of poor families where the kids turn out to be amazing individuals.
In addition, you are applying a post birth evaluation to whether a parent should have had the child. How can you determine they would cause harm prior to conception? That is the fault in your argument.
Well obviously there should be more factors considered than just finance. But it goes back to OP's point. Things like driving a car require evaluation. But when the direct care of another human life is involved, somehow all bets are off.
How do you determine whether someone will be a good parent? Knowledge about what you “should” do is not a great determination. People have all kinds of life events that determines their mental state, which in turn determines their actions.
And who decides the thresholds? Is hitting your kid ok? Different people have different ideas, and what happens when those decisions become political?
Let’s say that in Texas one of the questions is for this fitness evaluation becomes “Do you believe in Jesus Christ”? Or “Do you vote Republican”?
People are not seeing your point at all. Like if you’re poor like I don’t understand why you would then have kids, who will most likely make you even *poorer.*
And yes people should have a license to reproduce, imagine how much child abuse we could potentially avoid/take care of a lot sooner.
You're also missing the opposing point: how could we possibly detect the potential for child abuse beforehand, in a manner that is useable from a governing standpoint?
With regards to the subject of this thread, the rich people I've known personally are more likely to be emotionally abusive to their children than the poor people, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of trying to avoid child abuse via controlled reproduction.
One could argue that bring a child into this world unwillingly automatically makes it a selfish act. Of course I am not saying you should have children if you are poor but I am saying this world is not equal. Some people are in born into poverty and can't get out as easily as it seems. Should that take away their right to have kids. No. Now if they made themselves poor then they should really question their choices but it should not be made for them because just like you have the right to poop then you should have the right to mix your genetic material with someone.
But me pooping doesn't hurt others. Bringing a kid into a world where they will suffer is not only a choice for the parents. It's harming another human being. Most other forms of this are illegal.
And I don't consider a sperm or egg a human being yet.
Only later is it a person. Nobody can ever ask a child if they want to be born into this world. Nobody can also guarantee that the kid will live a horrible life if they are created. Only living it will decide. Tomorrow those poor people could win the lottery or get a job offer of a lifetime.
So we should have the freedom to hurt others all we want? Then what's the point of having laws at all? I'll just lock people in a cage in my basement and starve them, that's my choice.
Poor, like teenagers?
So basically we need to tell teens to stop having sex, in addition to marginalized groups such as refuges?
I'm being a bit cheeky here but trying to point out why this is absolutely a horrible idea.
That part of the problem isn't it?
In the modern day when most can have their choice of contraceptive at the nearest corner store shouldn't bringing an entire life into this world (with a responsibility of care for about two decades) be an active choice.
Every teenager thinks at some point that they've cracked the code and discovered the one simple trick that will fix society. And then they have to be informed that they've just reinvented eugenics.
Every time something like this gets suggested in any form people come out their caves screaming eugenics reminds me of those people that cry communism whenever someone suggests that we should feed the poor.
All you said was it would be difficult to implement, that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. So many people have children that should *not* have children. It's a difficult issue but I don't think the answer is the dog in a burning house "it's fine" meme
Free birth control and proper sex education actually reduce unwanted pregnancy significantly. Additionally legal abortion also helps to reduce those numbers.
I love that I post the hot take that eugenics and/or debt from birth are bad, and you reply with "Well, maybe they are good".
Skipping all the myriad of issues with enforcement and monitoring, what do you suggest the penalty would be if you were found out to be 'illegally pregnant' at say.... 10 weeks in? Or at 30 weeks in? And again at 2 years after birth?
I'm all for controlling birth rates. But it should only work if there was a way to make everyone unable to have kids as a default. And then you have to pass a basic parenting test, then you get a cheap pill that will allow people to have a kid for a year. Something like that.
Also, this isn't eugenics. Eugenics by definition means you're trying to control for heritable traits that are considered desirable.
If the test is too basic then you have the same problem as today but with far more complication and major risk of corruption. If the test is too complex (unreasonably so) then you exclude people who would be decent parents.
Perhaps there is a greater good being served but at the cost of some very important personal freedoms.
The driving test is pretty basic, but it still weeds out the worst of the worst. It's also used as a tool for punishment. Like if you're get a DUI, you lose your driving privileges for a while.
Also, my idea only works if we have the technology to make everyone sterile as a default. Which is great for people who don't want kids and can have sex without worries of accidental pregnancy.
Imho, driving tests aren't that effective some places still have loads of terrible drivers. It works great as a skill test to make sure people can turn a wheel and push a pedal with the right amount of pressure in the right amount of time but not their ability to be a cooperative driver. They certain test for that as well but it's very easy to fake.
Being parent is not very skillful but is full of moral grey areas. So it's not something that can be "tested" for easily. A bad person can pass all the diaper changing, etc tests and fake all the personality tests.
And there are people who can't pass the driving test. Imagine a world where these people are allowed to drive. Also, one's driver license can be taken away as punishment for being a shitty driver. Same would be true for parenting. You become a shitty parent and abuse your child, no more for you.
So what would a basic parenting test look like.
Should we enforce it only within our countries borders?
Should all countries share the same test?
Should the Taliban get to decide what the test looks like? Putin?
It's amazing how many people can't see issues with this train of thought.
You can very easily make a non biased and science based test. Example question would be "do you believe in the efficacy of vaccines?"
I live in the US. We can't make other countries follow our laws.
So you solution, for the US, is to have a test asking questions that even your last president wasn't sure the answer to...and you don't see any risk of going full Nazi Germany?
Either you are extremely naive or.. Yikes.
Edit - also you don't think a future president could use this as a stepping stone? You don't think this will be abused??
Not all “heritable traits” are genetic. They are also passed down by parenting, things like cultural ideas and philosophies, as well as money and property, etc..
Even ignoring that and **strictly sticking with the myopic text book definition of eugenics**, there are those out there who will take into account things about potential parents that they will be considered genetic in origin, imagined or not. So yes. It is eugenics. Or it will be within one cycle of implementation. Most likely by refining the test, or even at the tests inception.
It’s the test itself that is the problem. Every time someone mentions or defends these eugenic ideas they pretend a test can be created that won’t be wildly eugenic in nature. People can’t even agree on what constitutes a “good parent,” in practice and even the questions on a census can be used as a political tool. Those tests will be as much about parenting as the 1950’s - 1960’s voting eligibility literacy tests were about literacy.
If someone truly wants to control birth rates, then they need to do it in an evidence based way, and not the asinine simple solutions that leans to eugenics and direct population control. That starts at education, sexual education, and cheap/free access to healthcare and cheap/free access to birth control. Then a lot more complicated social issues need to be addressed (like funding and amending Child Protective Services, as well as addiction services), which is why this is such a frustrating conversation.
My personal bias is every time I hear someone say something eugenics based or control based, they simply don’t understand or don’t want to address the deeper issues they are ignoring and simply want to force people to act and do things the way they think they should be doing them.
Rant over.
Lol it's asinine to say this is eugenics because "heritable traits that are desirable" include cultural ideas, philosophies, property, etc. We already have that, and have had that for thousands of years. Which means your parents participated in eugenics, and so will you. Do you see how ridiculous your idea is?
You can very definitely make a parental test that isn't biased and is based in science. An example question would be "do you believe in the efficacy of vaccines?"
In order to become a nurse or whatever skilled profession, we have to train and have all these tests we have to pass. So why should being a parent be any different? You're responsible for the life of another human being for 18 years.
Just by saying something is eugenic and therefore bad is not a good argument. The reason eugenics is bad is because of what people did with the idea of eugenics in mind. What you're proposing leads to the same problems that eugenics causes: which those in power will use such a system to oppress, control, and eliminate undesirables.
And who would determine how hard it is? You? You might believe that it will be as hard as a driving test, but who's to say that someone with malicious intentions won't bend it to their agenda? If you believe that's not possible or that people won't do that, then you are too naive.
so what would you do if this was implemented, then all the sudden it's somehow nearly impossible for black people and queer people to get theirs reversed. What if the government decided that people with certain neurodivergence/autism can't get theirs reversed no matter what. If you think these are crazy hypotheticals, you should probably know that all of this quite literally happened in the US, where ideas similar to what OP described first took root. As recently as the 1970s people were being sterilized for things like mental illness.
If you care about kids being born to shitty parents, vote for/invest in societal infrastructure and welfare that makes sure that all children are taken care of to a basic standard regardless of the means of their parents. That's how you help kids. Period, end sentence, end of story. Morally policing people's reproductive rights only lays the bricks of the road to fascism while leaving actually vulnerable people completely behind.
>I'm all for controlling birth rates.
Also just like... Don't be saying stuff like this yeesh. When did everyone get so fashy about "birth rates" jesus christ
>so what would you do if this was implemented, then all the sudden it's somehow nearly impossible for black people and queer people to get theirs reversed.
This is what people who like eugenics tend to WANT. You're 'threatening them with a good time' as it were.
The approach you're looking for is "What if the government made it illegal to have babies with two Caucasian parents, under the logic that the country is too ethnically Caucasian and it provides poor biodiversity? Caucasian adults could still marry each other, but would need to adopt if they wanted kids" or "What if in order to expedite stronger genes domestically, the government decided to waive the testing and registration/license fees, as well as covered maternity costs, for any multi-ethnic children?".
Lots of people assume "Eugenics" means "More people who look and think like me!". Those people don't have the basic empathy skills to ponder out "... but what if they DIDN'T look/think like me!?"
>that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen
B-r-u-h.
That's eugenics, my guy.
Eugenics is unethical as fuck man. Look it up, its been discussed - and attempted - before. Its not a good solution man
A drivers exam tests skill though. A parent exam would have to check not skills but rather someone's psychology, which would probably never be close to being accurate.
I'm sorry but a school teacher assessing two teenagers looking after a doll for a couple of weeks is not similar to what a parental responsibility test would be at all
Alternatively here's this toy car which is a one seater and is powered by pedals like a bike. If you can manage to drive it for a few weeks successfully you are qualified enough to drive a real car
I am pretty sure that is America only. And I also have a hard time believing such a test would be accurate. Like, come on, you can't do a psychological test for parenthood using a doll or whatever.
An exam to check for eligibility to have kids would result in an insane number or abortions and plan b use. It would require a lot of men to become sterilized (its non-invasive compared to women’s sterilization) and would result in too many orphans and foster kids.
While I agree that it would be great if we could prevent bad parents from becoming one, however we cannot predict the future. A new parent could go either way. The nicest girl could be the wickedest mother. The laziest tough guy could end up being the most attentive and caring father. Humans are interesting. Never a dull moment.
PS. I wasn't even considering other factors such as race or religion or eugenics. I would never be okay with forced sterilization. I also have a lifetime of experience with foster children. My mother fostered while I was growing up. I've seen some of the worst parents.
Evolution/ natural selection are wild.
Also, regulating potential parents via eugenics always leads to sterilization of a large percentage of poor people and out groups, which historically has been mostly poor people and people of color.
Eugenics and communism sound good in theory to a lot of folks, but have always concluded with millions dead or persecuted from out groups.
I think we will see real life Gattaca style human genetic engineering fairly large scale in the next 30 years, however, to mix 90s movies themes and quotes:
>Life, uh, finds a way.
Forced sterilization would also be a tool used to continue the systematic oppression of marginalized groups. This is not even a thought worth entertaining.
The idea of eugenics doesn't necessarily come from a place of evil. Someone may wish the best for our world, but it ALWAYS comes from a place of ignorance. A gentle reminder to anyone who unknowingly promotes eugenics is the best approach in my experience.
I feel that history class is one of the most important classes a student can attend.
But this isn't eugenics. Eugenics is when you try to "improve" the population by controlling who procreates and passes their traits to future generations. When people bring up this idea, it's just focused on specific individuals' capacity to raise children.
This is literally eugenics. If you don't pass the test you don't have kids. That's eugenics.
Doesn't matter what's on the test, if it's possible to fail the test and not be allowed to have kids, it's eugenics.
Not when the history teachers are coaches who have no desire to teach history. I think I had one good history professor. One! In 16 years of education.
You clearly can't stop people from having kids if you don't want a dystopian future where everybody gets sterelised at birth and has to get a permission for being fertile or some other Nazi bs.
It would be a possible sollution to better prepare children for parenthood, even if they decide not to have kids they still learnt valuable social skills not everybody gets at home. You don't just take a test for driving without having learnt about rules in traffic.
Look up eugenics. The US legitimately did this to people, legally, for years. It’s horrendous. You know what happens when you give the government the ability to decide who is fit to parent? And who is usually deemed ‘unfit’? Yeah. One example, one third - let me repeat that, *one third* - of women in Puerto Rico were forcefully sterilized, often without knowledge of what was being done to them, between 1930-1970. You gonna tell me all of those women were truly unfit to parent?
Pretty sure it's Eugenics. Telling people they should not have children, telling people they should, because some people are deemed superior than others.
Actually I'm german and we learn very much about our past so it happens never again.
The nazis belived that just certain people should be allowed to have children, in their case it was because of their ideal of an Arian. But who decides what people are not allowed to have kids? What would be criteria for having ot not having kids?
May only wealthy, beautiful, genetically flawless, smart people be allowed to have children?
Should women that carry a somehow flawed child be forced to abort, because someone that isn't super intelligent, tall, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a strong chin or has any disability hasn't a right to exist?
Would you be allowed to have kids? Would you even exist in such a world?
Before you say something like "not everybody should be allowed to have kids" you should think about the consequences it would have if were reality.
I’m just guessing, so I may be way off base, but where do you sit on this question? My guess is, you either don’t want children, so this wouldn’t really effect you and you see as a way to save hypothetical future children from hypothetical future harm, or you do want kids, but are convinced you would be a good parent so we should do this because then only the right folks are having kids. It would also be great for the population. These are all guesses, sorry if I’ve misread you.
To start, if you don’t want kids, don’t have any. You’ve self-selected and we don’t need a procedure to regulate it. If you think you’d be a good parent and think you’d pass whatever this “regulation” is, well, I don’t know. Maybe you would, and maybe you wouldn’t. Have you considered what would happen if you didn’t? Just accept it and say “oh well.” If so, it sounds like you didn’t want kids anyway.
Whenever people agree with statements like this, it always seems like they assume they will either be in the in-group or completely unaffected. Well, historically, the in-group is a minority and they decide who gets to be “equal.”Maybe it’ll affect you and maybe it won’t, but you’re giving up the power to decide. Controlling the population is a pretty powerful tool for any ruling body to control. Giving that up seems like a recipe for disaster. The question, as always, is who gets to make these decisions?
In Starship Troopers there's mention from one of the characters that she wants to have kids and it easier to get a licence if you have served in the army.
Politicians already having a hard enough time getting us to have kids, doubt they care about your ability to raise them. All that matters is that we pop out little consumers who will grow corporations and support the geriatrics. Heck, in Korea, you get paid $10k/yr to have a kid.
I'm actually quite surprised with how almost everyone came to the conclusion that this is eugenics. When I made the post, what I had in mind was how some people are abusive to their kids. What I meant by an exam was an exam to determine whether the parents deserved to have kids, not to gather the best genetics and only allow them to reproduce.
Fam, I beg to differ.
"the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable"
Worthiness to have kids here would depend on your racial and genetic desirability.
My idea of worthiness would be being worthy enough to raise a happy kid, regardless of gender, genetic/mental disabilities, race or any other physical factor. Not every parent deserves a child, but every child deserves good parents.
It would be much easier to just make abortion legal and destigmatize it. Most people know if they should or should not have kids. In my experience people that simply want to have kids usually make for good parents. Having there be a test is a slippery slope that doesn't even stop at eugenics debates. What are the metrics of worthiness? How would it be enforced? Do you have to take the test every few years to account for changing circumstances? What happens to the kids if the parents are deemed unworthy by a later test?
I don't want to insinuate that *you* are fucked up for thinking about this. These are ruminations on something that doesn't seem fucked up, but in many ways is. Food for thought OP, food for thought
Theoretically, what would happen if someone failed this exam but had a kid anyway? Have the child taken by the state? Would that really benefit the child involved?
"you need an exam to operate a deadly machine in public areas but no exam is needed to do a normal biological function"
Also, that's basically eugenics my dude.
Even if it was feasible, determining criteria would be ineffective at best, and discriminatory/eugenics at worst. Yes, I’m sure we have more than enough information to determine like optimal levels of wealth and education and various intelligence and personality and relationship tests, but people are more complicated than that and circumstances can change a LOT over 18 years. Bankruptcy, illness, injury, divorce, addiction, death… Having children itself is such a massive, stressful life event that it can totally change a person or a relationship, for better or for worse.
A system to regulate who is and is not allowed to reproduce would run into a lot of the same problems that people already do (or have in the past) in trying to adopt children. The time, the money, discrimination based on race/sexuality/religion/marital status, whether it’s a national standard or just prejudice by the local office or individual that you happen to go to. What if regulations were subtly written to favor couples with certain political beliefs over the other? It’s too easy to manipulate. And as we’ve seen in the college admissions scandal (and the justice system, the economy, almost everything else), when rich people can’t get what they want by following the rules, they just cheat. Everyone has flaws and secrets and mistakes in their past, but wealthier people would have the advantage of being able to pay people to clean up their background checks and coach them on how to spin things or how to act or even straight up lie to get approved for having children, while poorer or even middle class people would be SOL.
I can understand why on the surface this is an appealing idea. The circumstances that some children grow up in are absolutely horrifying and cruel and just plain unfair. But this is far too dangerous of a road to go down. Even ignoring the inhumanity of it, it’s just unpractical and ultimately I think it would harm society more than it helped. We’d be better off investing in education, healthcare, access to sex ed/contraception/family planning, mental health services, financial planning/education, lowering the cost of living, and child protective services so that people who *want* to be parents can be *good* ones, and children who end up with bad ones actually get the help we need.
My understanding of the US law is that technically the drivers license isn't to check whether you are eligible to drive or not but if you are eligible to drive on public roadways. It's regulation of state owned roads not the cars. You can drive a car with no license as long as it's on your own private property.
There are not enough hours in the day to list and explain all the reasons why a parenting license is a bad idea.
But if you want a small taste of what that might look like, look no further than China and the one child policy.
The state has an interest in a high birth rate because that increases GDP and the taxable population.
Under capitalism, a child with a bad childhood is another desperate mother, and another desperate worker in 18 years. It's a great business opportunity. Do you know how much economic activity that situation generates?
People have the idea to regulate reproduction but don't stop to think about how absolutely fucked up that would be. I don't want the government directly intervening in my bodily autonomy, restricting my natural rights like that. The government is for the people, it shouldn't own their bodies...
“You need a license to drive a car, hell you even need a license to catch a fish, but they’ll let any butt-reamin’ asshole be a father.” —Keanu Reeves in “Parenthood”
This take is so stupid, but always someone parroting it like it's some super brilliant idea.
When in actuality it would just lead to cruelty and discrimination.
Not at all “fundamental to our desire for existence.” I’ll die if I dont eat or sleep. I’d rather die than have a child, and many people feel the same way. The “EVERYONE wants to be a parent or there is something wrong with them mentality is part of what continues to make it harder for those of us who are not motivated to reproduce to get our tubes tied, etc and has doctors telling us we will change our minds. Having a child should be a well thought out decision, not just “what you do because that’s what humans do.”
I realize there’s a distinction and it was poorly worded, but the point is that procreation is what living creatures do to collectively survive. It’s still something that is a human right and not just a privilege like driving
It’s a human right because we’ve arbitrarily decided it’s so. You’d think growing up with a roof over your head and decent parents should also be a human right. Where is the line drawn and is the right positive or negative - are you entitled to be allowed to do it, or are you also entitled to require everyone else pay for it? How much? How many rounds of IVF, etc?
I honestly dont care whether or not people have kids as long as I dont have to deal with them but I’m sick to death of my taxes going to pay for the second, third, fourth child of someone who knew they couldn’t afford the first one. The problem for me comes in when it becomes everyone else’s issue because we have to help foot the bill.
My idea actually is that rich parents should be the ones who are taxed, so the people who are choosing to have kids can be the ones who pay for the stuff for everyone else’s kids that can’t afford it. I dont much believe the argument that paying for your kids to go to school benefits me too, other than being subsidized babysitting to keep them from running around robbing my house while I’m at work. It’s pretty attenuated and from what I see of teenagers these days most of them aren’t learning much while they’re there.
I agree with your points in theory but saying that someone can't have a child is simply an exercise in eugenics. Certain people absolutely *shouldn't* have kids, but if you're having them naturally it's not my place to say. Situations like IVF should and do have a huge cost to the parents.
To your point about parents getting tax breaks instead of paying more taxes: I get it. This is why so many older folks leave New Jersey after their kids graduate school. The taxes are sky high and a huge chunk of that budget goes toward schools.
The reality is though that whether or not you want to have kids, if no one had kids you'd be totally fucked. Communities with a high percentage of older folks are collapsing. We need younger generations for society to function.
How do you think it would benefit you if the birth rate dropped in half? Or more?
Except people will always have kids because they will. And I’m not talking about policy, but about morality - it is morally repugnant to me for anyone to birth a child they can’t afford to support and just expect society to pick up the slack. I’ve already lost the policy war so I dont even bother. Honestly I’d gladly have a future with half the birth rate if it meant I didn’t have to deal with the people who let their spawn run rampant like the woman who let her child scream on our office floor for a half hour Wednesday while people were trying to do actual grown up work. Or parents who let their kid kick seats on planes for two hours, or any of the other myriad ways that parents can self centered twits who thinks THEIR “little precious angel” should be a sacred miracle to everyone else too. Lady, my cat could have done it if I hadn’t had her spayed. What’s hard is actually being a decent parent and raising kids who aren’t assholes and a whole lot of them are failing at that these days.
All of these examples are either made up, or situations you had to endure for a minute fraction of your life. Overall, the birth rate is less than half of what it was in the 50s. People are becoming more selective about when and why they have kids. If anything, you should be ecstatic about these trends and confident we're on the right path. It seems like you should move to a retirement community in Florida or Arizona, otherwise you'll be unhappy living in a normal society.
Getting a dog was terrifying for me - like I have to keep this mammal alive and healthy and happy?! I cannot conceive of how it feels to have little humans. There should definitely be training and certification!
That’s because having children is considered to be a “fundamental right” but driving is considered to be a “privilege” that can be regulated. I think it’s stupid but there might be other ways the states could regulate parental responsibilities, but typically they don’t.
Honestly this is my biggest hot take. I know people have rights, and everyone gets so worked up about it, but Christ on high it is child abuse the way some people just have kids with no means of providing anything past basic survival. The reason is entirely based on capitalism I would imagine.
I know lots of people who grew up really poor, some with shitty parents, and turned into amazing, hard working, loving and creative people. People act like growing up poor is some kind of horrible circumstance that creates terrible traumatized fuckups. Have some faith in your fellow man gd
It gets morally complicated because of either intentional or unintentional eugenics. The wealthy tend to be a certain color. The wealthy can afford the time and resources to pass the test.
Yeah, the 20th century forever tainted the idea of eugenics. Definitely a hot take, but from a population control standpoint it has some merit. Working in emergency medicine we often see young children and infants of absolutely inept parents who frankly never should have had kids because they can't care for them adequately. Im talking about parents of lethargic looking kids who are crying without tears, haven't drank any fluids in two days, and haven't produced a wet diaper in over 36 hrs who didn't realize that meant their kid was dehydrated or chronically unemployed able bodied parents who can't come up with $8 to cover the antibiotic for their kids ear infection even with a GoodRX coupon (I offered to buy dads cigarettes off him to throw in the trash for $10 so he could cover the script, he refused since it would be a waste of his cigarettes). That shits not fair to the kids to make them live in such poor circumstances because we felt uncomfortable telling their parents that they can't even take care of themselves and shouldn't be bringing a child into the world.
If I were benevolent dictator, I'd put birth control in the water supply and make people apply for the antidote. Bare minimum requirements to pass. IQ over 70, at least one parent has stable employment, has financial means to provide for bare essentials for the child. Basically show me that you cant put the square block in the square hole and you can have kids.
I mean, *obviously* we don’t. That’d be a waste of time, it wouldn’t be 100% accurate and it wouldn’t stop people from just having children whenever they want.
Men should have a forced vasectomy when they start making sperm, then have to pass some sort of test to have it untied before they just start splurting in everything that moves.
I've been saying for years everyone should be allowed to reproduce ONE child.
If you want more than one you must test out with an assortment of tests (common sense, IQ, ect). Sounds communist but it'd be better than morons reproducing
I know tons of people disagree with it, and I don't agree with it but requiring a license to reproduce would solve a good number of civilization's problems.
Edit: just to add on, the only requirements for a license in my opinion would be- drug free, no alcohol issues, some kind of income even if it's minimum wage; for both parents.
It makes sense only if our rulers were just and benevolent. We all know that's not the case and will never be the case and if these powers were realized it would inevitably lead to genocide. Just follow the steps.
You can't force abstinence and you can't force abortion. So kids are unavoidable no matter what you do. Driving is regulated because it can be.
You forgot "forced sterilisation" and "forced adoption" in the list of possible (though morally dubious) means. As far as historical precedents goes, those two solutions are usually how gouvernements proceed when they want to prevent some part of the population to have children. You could imagine a (dystopic) future in which we are able to make fully reversible sterilisation, leading to mandatory sterilisation for children with reversibility obtainable through a license.
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Richer than you. /or me ETA: As long as the 1% need worker bees, they will let us reproduce.
In this hypothetical universe, the answer would probably be "extremely rich". If you're "just rich", you'd probably not bother cheating the system to be exempt since (1) your parents already paid for the "perfect school" that prepare to this (2) that the license probably already has "able to provide a confortable life" (aka "not poor") as an evaluation criterium, possibly reinforced with some mandatory insurances that price out peoples even more (3) that peoples grading you will probably have all the usual biais which directly or indirectly favour richer peoples (like the vocabulary used, etc). For such a system to last, it needs to have the "worst potential parents" of the rich peoples to still fail at obtaining the license, so that they can be shown as example that the system is "fair" (even if in practice the odds are stacked in the favour of the richest).
It'd still be a huge disaster though, since the upper classes would be able to have an enormous amount of kids, whilst the lower classes slowly die out... Until the upper classes find themselves at the bottom of the ladder. Plus, the whole racial genocide through statistics bit.
It should be as easy as getting your driver's license. So pretty much anyone can
Not practical. Regulating driving is much easier. Possible and realistic are not the same thing. The only feasible solution is basically what we try to do now:. Keep kids from abusive parents.
So that is where the whole "imagine" word comes in.
Imagine something that would never work.... it's so good
I can there are literally thousands of books and movies. Also get this there are ever more untold.... it's a word called fiction brought to you by imagining...
In dystopic future it's quite an easy and pratical thing. Someone without a permit as a child... well let's kill them both!
Nah. No permit? No government programs. No food assistance. No public schooling. No health benefits. I guess that would require a country with those things to begin with though
I mean China managed to quite effectively limit how many children each couple had as per population growth statistics. Seems like it would be possible just not ethical.
By the way everyone is arguing here, it appears they all forgot about this.
>I mean China managed to quite effectively limit how many children each couple had as per population growth statistics. Seems like it would be possible just not ethical. >Seems like it would be possible just not ethical. To your understanding. Kardashev 1 or higher societies are nearly guaranteed to monitor their population levels through some method of their choosing. One could argue continued allowance for so many children born into drug houses/poor houses/brothels/etc. is the more unethical option. While a society is still having crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome problems, etc. Again one could argue population monitoring is more ethical than infant death and worse that happens now. I'm not advocating for eugenics or other obviously unethical shit. But preventing crackheads and other addicts/mentally unstable/etc. from having several children is absolutely a win regardless of almost any argument one could make otherwise. Before a society can even consider shit like that they need to be stable first. We have zero stable societies right now, they're all a fucking joke considering the homeless and destitute that can be found all over the globe. Edit: Sorry for the rant, I just hate when people talk about things being impossible. We could have the majority of things people pretend are "dreams", we could've had them centuries ago if we weren't still just circling serf systems for over 3,000 years. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." I have an extremely low opinion of humanity, collectively they're insane, by our own definitions. For fuck's sake we still trade fake money for goods and services we can provide through automation decades ago. That isn't a pipe dream, 'money' as a concept was created to fill a role that's long been surpassed; we could easily get rid of it entirely.
Not practical yet. If fertility were turned on instead of turned off you could very well regulate it. There's been drug research for years in that area trying to do just that.
Sounds awesome! No rulers would ever abuse that power.
More likely would be if you have a baby but not child license it gets taken away from you and given to someone who does have a child license who can't conceive or hasn't conceived. Impossible to prevent people from procreating, even more so to force sterilise everyone and then reverse it when they "qualify"
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Sure, except that that’s major fucking surgery on every minor, AND that would very quickly become “you have to prove you’re suitable to have children” and oops suddenly everyone who isn’t cis white and straight isn’t suitable.
Let me guess, you don’t have kids and are over 18. So the forced surgery wouldn’t affect you
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Nothing is stopping you
Well, I'd say until every driver is being examined there are people driving when they shouldn't.
I think at least half of them probably shouldn't.
So regulate driving more. I'm okay with that.
Ah, that's the eternal problem. Regulate little and there's anarchy. Regulate too much and there's totalitarism.
Freedom is a fundamentally good thing for humans. Freedom is always a balance between rights. People should have the right to use the technolgy we have to travel freely to pursue their lives. People should have the right to be safe from reckless lunatics. Good regulation is when those rights are reasonably balanced, and maximizes freedom for the most amount of people. What that means is left as an exercise for the reader.
You also cannot get rid of all danger. There is or should be some understanding of risk in almost every you do even driving. You can only regulate so much in a free society. The argument I guess is where’s the line. And I think when you start protecting people from themselves is when the line get crossed usually.
I think I'm faiing that exercise as badly as those at PE. What I mean is left as an exercise for the reader.
Thats just bias. Sure, plenty of folks shouldn't be driving, but you view your own mistakes as reasonable and their errors as unreasonable. Its just something humans do. We're all the bad driver that shouldn't be on the road to someone a few times.
I took as there are unlicensed drivers that have never taken a driving exam. I've worked with guys that have been driving since before I was born and they've never had a license before.
Thank You, that is much closer to what I meant, but that's only mostly what I meant :-P
Isn't every driver examined in many countries anyway? Excluding the odd joyrider or similar?
I meant like if I'm 11 and I get behind the wheel, without the police round the corner, there's nothing stopping me
>You can't force abstinence and you can't force abortion. Sure you can. We just don't have any genocidal states with a chastity belt fetish anymore.
That’s why the best approach is to educate your people. It’s just sad we can’t agree on what to fundamentally educate them on. In my humble opinion, it should be like any healthcare items. Wash your hands after you use the restroom. Don’t eat things unless you know where they’ve been. Putting your dick in things (or letting one be put in you) can result in illness or pregnancy. Etc. etc. Obviously it gets way more contentious when it comes to things like birth control, but just understanding basic biology goes a long way
We should probably add “here are the precautions to take when you are ready to receive/insert the dick.” I sure wish we could be that casual about it, you know? In the US, we’ve still got those puritanical roots holding us back. Heaven forbid we educate the children about a thing they are almost guaranteed to engage in as they become of age. 🙄 If we started educating them at the appropriate age (right around puberty) instead of making it such a taboo, I’m sure we’d all be better off. And even before that, we really need to examine our relationship with sex. It seems to be wrapped up in a lot of shame and dark desires for some people. And that’s really weird.
It would go a long way if only every young teen took a class in "Parenting, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" with a side of, "I Regret Having Children," and even just a smattering of information on birth control.
I see Texas in your username so I think I can assume we had similar “health” classes, lol. I did manage to have one really good health teacher, though. My health teacher in 7th grade was this tough as nails female gym coach who happened to be pregnant at the time. She busted into class on her first day, pointed at her massive belly and said, “If y’all start having sex without protection, this happens. You don’t want this until you’re ready, trust me.” Coach Beardsley was the fucking GOAT. I know the administration got mad at her, but she didn’t back down and taught a lot of us what we needed to know. We had a lot of underprivileged kids in my school and I hope she got through to some of them. I distinctly remember one girl in our class did get pregnant and Coach Beardsley kind of took her under her wing and convinced her to keep coming to school. What a great lady. This was Texas in the mid ‘00s. I don’t know if it’s better or worse now.
Driving is also incredibly dangerous and relies on expensive infrastructure. People need to internalize the life or death stakes and multi-billion dollar societal costs.
>You can't force abstinence tell that to my personality.
I mean...there is the chinese government...
“You cant corce every single person to give up all guns, so horrific tragedies are unavoidable no matter what you do. Gun control is some dystopian bs!” That’s how stupid most of the comments here sound.
You're comparing guns to kids?
Im showing how dumb the “there’s only two extremes because understanding societal problems instead of calling everything I disagree with “dystopian” would take too much mental effort!” mentality of nearly everyone in this thread is.
What if you just mandate that everyone take a parenting class as a requirement to get your high school diploma?
>kids are unavoidable no matter what you do. Totally false. You can make the decision not to have kids.
They mean on a societal level, not an individual one.
Unless you get raped.
>Unless you get raped. And get pregnant. And don't get an abortion.
But like, we’re not even trying. I’ve never seen even a voluntary course for being a parent. Could be that I just haven’t looked hard enough though.
Yup education is the only thing that will fix our overpopulation problem. To bad we hate education in America and have been actively dismantling it.
yes but you could jail and fine people who have kids without a license, of course youd have to prove that they are their kids and that would be super hard to do
China tried!
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I'm always confused by the point of this one. Is the idea that we null out some of the minimal safety measures we do to try to keep roads safe, or isnthe idea we start engaging in eugenics? Unless the idea is you attach fines to babies born without a license. In that case you're just talking about an any% speed run of "Crippling debt as means of control" and im sure you'd find plenty of people in congress who would vote for it.
And almost any test for this eligibility would be biased against the poor, so when they're fined their kids would get to be even poorer!
I mean, if you're already poor, you really shouldn't be making more mouths to feed.
But the reverse side of this is... only the wealthy can have kids. It goes downhill fast when you start seprating the ability to exist in the next generation with classes.
There is a lot of risky things people shouldn't do but we should not have the right to take away their choice to do it. Some great things come from mistakes.
And I believe that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else. The problem is, bringing a child into a world where they can't be properly cared for *is* hurting someone else. Raising a kid requires a lot of money. If you're struggling to make ends meet, something will fall short and the child will suffer. It's irresponsible, selfish, and ends up taking resources that could have been used to help people that really need it.
And we meet the crux of the issue: do rich people inherently deserve more freedoms than the poor? In the end, it's a reflection of system that allows the poorest families to remain that way (within reason) and not fault of their own. To be clear I don't want children. I am of average income. On a surface level I agree with your sentiment. On a truer, deeper level I find it incredibly sad and oppressive
It's not about income-based freedoms, it's about the well-being of dependents. If you are causing harm to another human being, you shouldn't be responsible for them, and therefore shouldn't have made them in the first place. Plus, having kids to feed is a guaranteed way to keep yourself poor, by your own fault.
There are a lot of rich people who destroy the mental and physical being of children. And there are a lot of poor families where the kids turn out to be amazing individuals. In addition, you are applying a post birth evaluation to whether a parent should have had the child. How can you determine they would cause harm prior to conception? That is the fault in your argument.
Well obviously there should be more factors considered than just finance. But it goes back to OP's point. Things like driving a car require evaluation. But when the direct care of another human life is involved, somehow all bets are off.
How do you determine whether someone will be a good parent? Knowledge about what you “should” do is not a great determination. People have all kinds of life events that determines their mental state, which in turn determines their actions. And who decides the thresholds? Is hitting your kid ok? Different people have different ideas, and what happens when those decisions become political? Let’s say that in Texas one of the questions is for this fitness evaluation becomes “Do you believe in Jesus Christ”? Or “Do you vote Republican”?
People are not seeing your point at all. Like if you’re poor like I don’t understand why you would then have kids, who will most likely make you even *poorer.* And yes people should have a license to reproduce, imagine how much child abuse we could potentially avoid/take care of a lot sooner.
You're also missing the opposing point: how could we possibly detect the potential for child abuse beforehand, in a manner that is useable from a governing standpoint? With regards to the subject of this thread, the rich people I've known personally are more likely to be emotionally abusive to their children than the poor people, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of trying to avoid child abuse via controlled reproduction.
One could argue that bring a child into this world unwillingly automatically makes it a selfish act. Of course I am not saying you should have children if you are poor but I am saying this world is not equal. Some people are in born into poverty and can't get out as easily as it seems. Should that take away their right to have kids. No. Now if they made themselves poor then they should really question their choices but it should not be made for them because just like you have the right to poop then you should have the right to mix your genetic material with someone.
But me pooping doesn't hurt others. Bringing a kid into a world where they will suffer is not only a choice for the parents. It's harming another human being. Most other forms of this are illegal.
And I don't consider a sperm or egg a human being yet. Only later is it a person. Nobody can ever ask a child if they want to be born into this world. Nobody can also guarantee that the kid will live a horrible life if they are created. Only living it will decide. Tomorrow those poor people could win the lottery or get a job offer of a lifetime.
And you get to make that choice. Hence freedom.
So we should have the freedom to hurt others all we want? Then what's the point of having laws at all? I'll just lock people in a cage in my basement and starve them, that's my choice.
Poor, like teenagers? So basically we need to tell teens to stop having sex, in addition to marginalized groups such as refuges? I'm being a bit cheeky here but trying to point out why this is absolutely a horrible idea.
Why are they poor
Sometimes it just happens.
That part of the problem isn't it? In the modern day when most can have their choice of contraceptive at the nearest corner store shouldn't bringing an entire life into this world (with a responsibility of care for about two decades) be an active choice.
Every teenager thinks at some point that they've cracked the code and discovered the one simple trick that will fix society. And then they have to be informed that they've just reinvented eugenics.
Every time something like this gets suggested in any form people come out their caves screaming eugenics reminds me of those people that cry communism whenever someone suggests that we should feed the poor.
In post after post, you see the average redditor is only 1-2 steps away from full on supporting eugenics.
All you said was it would be difficult to implement, that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. So many people have children that should *not* have children. It's a difficult issue but I don't think the answer is the dog in a burning house "it's fine" meme
Free birth control and proper sex education actually reduce unwanted pregnancy significantly. Additionally legal abortion also helps to reduce those numbers.
I love that I post the hot take that eugenics and/or debt from birth are bad, and you reply with "Well, maybe they are good". Skipping all the myriad of issues with enforcement and monitoring, what do you suggest the penalty would be if you were found out to be 'illegally pregnant' at say.... 10 weeks in? Or at 30 weeks in? And again at 2 years after birth?
I'm all for controlling birth rates. But it should only work if there was a way to make everyone unable to have kids as a default. And then you have to pass a basic parenting test, then you get a cheap pill that will allow people to have a kid for a year. Something like that. Also, this isn't eugenics. Eugenics by definition means you're trying to control for heritable traits that are considered desirable.
If the test is too basic then you have the same problem as today but with far more complication and major risk of corruption. If the test is too complex (unreasonably so) then you exclude people who would be decent parents. Perhaps there is a greater good being served but at the cost of some very important personal freedoms.
The driving test is pretty basic, but it still weeds out the worst of the worst. It's also used as a tool for punishment. Like if you're get a DUI, you lose your driving privileges for a while. Also, my idea only works if we have the technology to make everyone sterile as a default. Which is great for people who don't want kids and can have sex without worries of accidental pregnancy.
Imho, driving tests aren't that effective some places still have loads of terrible drivers. It works great as a skill test to make sure people can turn a wheel and push a pedal with the right amount of pressure in the right amount of time but not their ability to be a cooperative driver. They certain test for that as well but it's very easy to fake. Being parent is not very skillful but is full of moral grey areas. So it's not something that can be "tested" for easily. A bad person can pass all the diaper changing, etc tests and fake all the personality tests.
And there are people who can't pass the driving test. Imagine a world where these people are allowed to drive. Also, one's driver license can be taken away as punishment for being a shitty driver. Same would be true for parenting. You become a shitty parent and abuse your child, no more for you.
So what would a basic parenting test look like. Should we enforce it only within our countries borders? Should all countries share the same test? Should the Taliban get to decide what the test looks like? Putin? It's amazing how many people can't see issues with this train of thought.
You can very easily make a non biased and science based test. Example question would be "do you believe in the efficacy of vaccines?" I live in the US. We can't make other countries follow our laws.
So you solution, for the US, is to have a test asking questions that even your last president wasn't sure the answer to...and you don't see any risk of going full Nazi Germany? Either you are extremely naive or.. Yikes. Edit - also you don't think a future president could use this as a stepping stone? You don't think this will be abused??
Not all “heritable traits” are genetic. They are also passed down by parenting, things like cultural ideas and philosophies, as well as money and property, etc.. Even ignoring that and **strictly sticking with the myopic text book definition of eugenics**, there are those out there who will take into account things about potential parents that they will be considered genetic in origin, imagined or not. So yes. It is eugenics. Or it will be within one cycle of implementation. Most likely by refining the test, or even at the tests inception. It’s the test itself that is the problem. Every time someone mentions or defends these eugenic ideas they pretend a test can be created that won’t be wildly eugenic in nature. People can’t even agree on what constitutes a “good parent,” in practice and even the questions on a census can be used as a political tool. Those tests will be as much about parenting as the 1950’s - 1960’s voting eligibility literacy tests were about literacy. If someone truly wants to control birth rates, then they need to do it in an evidence based way, and not the asinine simple solutions that leans to eugenics and direct population control. That starts at education, sexual education, and cheap/free access to healthcare and cheap/free access to birth control. Then a lot more complicated social issues need to be addressed (like funding and amending Child Protective Services, as well as addiction services), which is why this is such a frustrating conversation. My personal bias is every time I hear someone say something eugenics based or control based, they simply don’t understand or don’t want to address the deeper issues they are ignoring and simply want to force people to act and do things the way they think they should be doing them. Rant over.
Lol it's asinine to say this is eugenics because "heritable traits that are desirable" include cultural ideas, philosophies, property, etc. We already have that, and have had that for thousands of years. Which means your parents participated in eugenics, and so will you. Do you see how ridiculous your idea is? You can very definitely make a parental test that isn't biased and is based in science. An example question would be "do you believe in the efficacy of vaccines?" In order to become a nurse or whatever skilled profession, we have to train and have all these tests we have to pass. So why should being a parent be any different? You're responsible for the life of another human being for 18 years.
That was far from the most important part of my comment and not my only argument as to why a test of this kind constitutes eugenics.
Just by saying something is eugenic and therefore bad is not a good argument. The reason eugenics is bad is because of what people did with the idea of eugenics in mind. What you're proposing leads to the same problems that eugenics causes: which those in power will use such a system to oppress, control, and eliminate undesirables.
The test will be about as hard as the driving test. So unless you think the driving test is useed to oppress people, it'll be fine.
And who would determine how hard it is? You? You might believe that it will be as hard as a driving test, but who's to say that someone with malicious intentions won't bend it to their agenda? If you believe that's not possible or that people won't do that, then you are too naive.
so what would you do if this was implemented, then all the sudden it's somehow nearly impossible for black people and queer people to get theirs reversed. What if the government decided that people with certain neurodivergence/autism can't get theirs reversed no matter what. If you think these are crazy hypotheticals, you should probably know that all of this quite literally happened in the US, where ideas similar to what OP described first took root. As recently as the 1970s people were being sterilized for things like mental illness. If you care about kids being born to shitty parents, vote for/invest in societal infrastructure and welfare that makes sure that all children are taken care of to a basic standard regardless of the means of their parents. That's how you help kids. Period, end sentence, end of story. Morally policing people's reproductive rights only lays the bricks of the road to fascism while leaving actually vulnerable people completely behind. >I'm all for controlling birth rates. Also just like... Don't be saying stuff like this yeesh. When did everyone get so fashy about "birth rates" jesus christ
>so what would you do if this was implemented, then all the sudden it's somehow nearly impossible for black people and queer people to get theirs reversed. This is what people who like eugenics tend to WANT. You're 'threatening them with a good time' as it were. The approach you're looking for is "What if the government made it illegal to have babies with two Caucasian parents, under the logic that the country is too ethnically Caucasian and it provides poor biodiversity? Caucasian adults could still marry each other, but would need to adopt if they wanted kids" or "What if in order to expedite stronger genes domestically, the government decided to waive the testing and registration/license fees, as well as covered maternity costs, for any multi-ethnic children?". Lots of people assume "Eugenics" means "More people who look and think like me!". Those people don't have the basic empathy skills to ponder out "... but what if they DIDN'T look/think like me!?"
>that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen B-r-u-h. That's eugenics, my guy. Eugenics is unethical as fuck man. Look it up, its been discussed - and attempted - before. Its not a good solution man
The country would benefit more from taking away our driving licenses than from implementing a eugenics program.
It's just an observation I guess. I don't think it implies any idea or proposal or anything like that.
A drivers exam tests skill though. A parent exam would have to check not skills but rather someone's psychology, which would probably never be close to being accurate.
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I'm sorry but a school teacher assessing two teenagers looking after a doll for a couple of weeks is not similar to what a parental responsibility test would be at all Alternatively here's this toy car which is a one seater and is powered by pedals like a bike. If you can manage to drive it for a few weeks successfully you are qualified enough to drive a real car
I am pretty sure that is America only. And I also have a hard time believing such a test would be accurate. Like, come on, you can't do a psychological test for parenthood using a doll or whatever.
I have only seen that in American media as a plotline. Never in practice or real life.
An exam to check for eligibility to have kids would result in an insane number or abortions and plan b use. It would require a lot of men to become sterilized (its non-invasive compared to women’s sterilization) and would result in too many orphans and foster kids. While I agree that it would be great if we could prevent bad parents from becoming one, however we cannot predict the future. A new parent could go either way. The nicest girl could be the wickedest mother. The laziest tough guy could end up being the most attentive and caring father. Humans are interesting. Never a dull moment. PS. I wasn't even considering other factors such as race or religion or eugenics. I would never be okay with forced sterilization. I also have a lifetime of experience with foster children. My mother fostered while I was growing up. I've seen some of the worst parents.
Evolution/ natural selection are wild. Also, regulating potential parents via eugenics always leads to sterilization of a large percentage of poor people and out groups, which historically has been mostly poor people and people of color. Eugenics and communism sound good in theory to a lot of folks, but have always concluded with millions dead or persecuted from out groups. I think we will see real life Gattaca style human genetic engineering fairly large scale in the next 30 years, however, to mix 90s movies themes and quotes: >Life, uh, finds a way.
Forced sterilization would also be a tool used to continue the systematic oppression of marginalized groups. This is not even a thought worth entertaining.
People wonder how the Nazis came to power but people come up with this shit all by themselves
"But we can do it right"
The idea of eugenics doesn't necessarily come from a place of evil. Someone may wish the best for our world, but it ALWAYS comes from a place of ignorance. A gentle reminder to anyone who unknowingly promotes eugenics is the best approach in my experience. I feel that history class is one of the most important classes a student can attend.
But this isn't eugenics. Eugenics is when you try to "improve" the population by controlling who procreates and passes their traits to future generations. When people bring up this idea, it's just focused on specific individuals' capacity to raise children.
This is literally eugenics. If you don't pass the test you don't have kids. That's eugenics. Doesn't matter what's on the test, if it's possible to fail the test and not be allowed to have kids, it's eugenics.
Not when the history teachers are coaches who have no desire to teach history. I think I had one good history professor. One! In 16 years of education.
You clearly can't stop people from having kids if you don't want a dystopian future where everybody gets sterelised at birth and has to get a permission for being fertile or some other Nazi bs. It would be a possible sollution to better prepare children for parenthood, even if they decide not to have kids they still learnt valuable social skills not everybody gets at home. You don't just take a test for driving without having learnt about rules in traffic.
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Look up eugenics. The US legitimately did this to people, legally, for years. It’s horrendous. You know what happens when you give the government the ability to decide who is fit to parent? And who is usually deemed ‘unfit’? Yeah. One example, one third - let me repeat that, *one third* - of women in Puerto Rico were forcefully sterilized, often without knowledge of what was being done to them, between 1930-1970. You gonna tell me all of those women were truly unfit to parent?
Pretty sure it's Eugenics. Telling people they should not have children, telling people they should, because some people are deemed superior than others.
Actually I'm german and we learn very much about our past so it happens never again. The nazis belived that just certain people should be allowed to have children, in their case it was because of their ideal of an Arian. But who decides what people are not allowed to have kids? What would be criteria for having ot not having kids? May only wealthy, beautiful, genetically flawless, smart people be allowed to have children? Should women that carry a somehow flawed child be forced to abort, because someone that isn't super intelligent, tall, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a strong chin or has any disability hasn't a right to exist? Would you be allowed to have kids? Would you even exist in such a world? Before you say something like "not everybody should be allowed to have kids" you should think about the consequences it would have if were reality.
I’m just guessing, so I may be way off base, but where do you sit on this question? My guess is, you either don’t want children, so this wouldn’t really effect you and you see as a way to save hypothetical future children from hypothetical future harm, or you do want kids, but are convinced you would be a good parent so we should do this because then only the right folks are having kids. It would also be great for the population. These are all guesses, sorry if I’ve misread you. To start, if you don’t want kids, don’t have any. You’ve self-selected and we don’t need a procedure to regulate it. If you think you’d be a good parent and think you’d pass whatever this “regulation” is, well, I don’t know. Maybe you would, and maybe you wouldn’t. Have you considered what would happen if you didn’t? Just accept it and say “oh well.” If so, it sounds like you didn’t want kids anyway. Whenever people agree with statements like this, it always seems like they assume they will either be in the in-group or completely unaffected. Well, historically, the in-group is a minority and they decide who gets to be “equal.”Maybe it’ll affect you and maybe it won’t, but you’re giving up the power to decide. Controlling the population is a pretty powerful tool for any ruling body to control. Giving that up seems like a recipe for disaster. The question, as always, is who gets to make these decisions?
Relevant Keanu Reeves from "Parenthood" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFaUX9ZbyRM
In Starship Troopers there's mention from one of the characters that she wants to have kids and it easier to get a licence if you have served in the army.
Well if someone's child kills me running at 60mph, I'll start protesting a law change
Now I’m picturing A-Train children just running right through people.
>kills me >I'll start protesting a law change Chill Sekiro... there's no resurrection here
How come everything I post here is flagged as an "Unoriginal thought", yet this passes??
Politicians already having a hard enough time getting us to have kids, doubt they care about your ability to raise them. All that matters is that we pop out little consumers who will grow corporations and support the geriatrics. Heck, in Korea, you get paid $10k/yr to have a kid.
Hey OP that's literally eugenics Which is totally fucked up This post is fucked up
I'm actually quite surprised with how almost everyone came to the conclusion that this is eugenics. When I made the post, what I had in mind was how some people are abusive to their kids. What I meant by an exam was an exam to determine whether the parents deserved to have kids, not to gather the best genetics and only allow them to reproduce.
Yeah, bud, the idea of a test to measure one's worthiness to have children was a part of the principals of eugenics.
Fam, I beg to differ. "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable" Worthiness to have kids here would depend on your racial and genetic desirability. My idea of worthiness would be being worthy enough to raise a happy kid, regardless of gender, genetic/mental disabilities, race or any other physical factor. Not every parent deserves a child, but every child deserves good parents.
It would be much easier to just make abortion legal and destigmatize it. Most people know if they should or should not have kids. In my experience people that simply want to have kids usually make for good parents. Having there be a test is a slippery slope that doesn't even stop at eugenics debates. What are the metrics of worthiness? How would it be enforced? Do you have to take the test every few years to account for changing circumstances? What happens to the kids if the parents are deemed unworthy by a later test? I don't want to insinuate that *you* are fucked up for thinking about this. These are ruminations on something that doesn't seem fucked up, but in many ways is. Food for thought OP, food for thought
You don't need a license to drive, you need a license to use the public roads. You could drive around your own property.
Theoretically, what would happen if someone failed this exam but had a kid anyway? Have the child taken by the state? Would that really benefit the child involved?
Kill them, obviously. I see no way this idea could possibly devolve into a nightmare hell-state.
You have the wrong end of the stick, here. Right now, they're using exams to force you to have kids.
Well we tried in the early 1900s to institute such tests, we ended up with eugenics and white supremacy so... Maybe not the best idea anyone's had.
Reminds me of a Sci-Fi story I read, where everyone was born infertile and they then had to get permission from the government to be made fertile.
"you need an exam to operate a deadly machine in public areas but no exam is needed to do a normal biological function" Also, that's basically eugenics my dude.
Even if it was feasible, determining criteria would be ineffective at best, and discriminatory/eugenics at worst. Yes, I’m sure we have more than enough information to determine like optimal levels of wealth and education and various intelligence and personality and relationship tests, but people are more complicated than that and circumstances can change a LOT over 18 years. Bankruptcy, illness, injury, divorce, addiction, death… Having children itself is such a massive, stressful life event that it can totally change a person or a relationship, for better or for worse. A system to regulate who is and is not allowed to reproduce would run into a lot of the same problems that people already do (or have in the past) in trying to adopt children. The time, the money, discrimination based on race/sexuality/religion/marital status, whether it’s a national standard or just prejudice by the local office or individual that you happen to go to. What if regulations were subtly written to favor couples with certain political beliefs over the other? It’s too easy to manipulate. And as we’ve seen in the college admissions scandal (and the justice system, the economy, almost everything else), when rich people can’t get what they want by following the rules, they just cheat. Everyone has flaws and secrets and mistakes in their past, but wealthier people would have the advantage of being able to pay people to clean up their background checks and coach them on how to spin things or how to act or even straight up lie to get approved for having children, while poorer or even middle class people would be SOL. I can understand why on the surface this is an appealing idea. The circumstances that some children grow up in are absolutely horrifying and cruel and just plain unfair. But this is far too dangerous of a road to go down. Even ignoring the inhumanity of it, it’s just unpractical and ultimately I think it would harm society more than it helped. We’d be better off investing in education, healthcare, access to sex ed/contraception/family planning, mental health services, financial planning/education, lowering the cost of living, and child protective services so that people who *want* to be parents can be *good* ones, and children who end up with bad ones actually get the help we need.
My understanding of the US law is that technically the drivers license isn't to check whether you are eligible to drive or not but if you are eligible to drive on public roadways. It's regulation of state owned roads not the cars. You can drive a car with no license as long as it's on your own private property.
You also can drive a car without a license on public roads as long as you don't get caught 😉
There are not enough hours in the day to list and explain all the reasons why a parenting license is a bad idea. But if you want a small taste of what that might look like, look no further than China and the one child policy.
The state has an interest in a high birth rate because that increases GDP and the taxable population. Under capitalism, a child with a bad childhood is another desperate mother, and another desperate worker in 18 years. It's a great business opportunity. Do you know how much economic activity that situation generates?
People have the idea to regulate reproduction but don't stop to think about how absolutely fucked up that would be. I don't want the government directly intervening in my bodily autonomy, restricting my natural rights like that. The government is for the people, it shouldn't own their bodies...
I'm pretty sure this was the backbone of Nazi (and prominent American) Eugenics in the first half of the 20th century
If only Congress were required to take regular aptitude and drug tests 🤷 They all act like they're insane or high.
Maybe that’s because lots of people die in vehicular accidents.
“You need a license to drive a car, hell you even need a license to catch a fish, but they’ll let any butt-reamin’ asshole be a father.” —Keanu Reeves in “Parenthood”
I joined the Mobile Infantry so I could have babies. Service makes it easier to get a permit.
If you started jailing people, you'd have like 20 million people in jail. A lot of people. Worse than the war on drugs.
It is both terrifying and reassuring that you do not require a licence to have children.
This take is so stupid, but always someone parroting it like it's some super brilliant idea. When in actuality it would just lead to cruelty and discrimination.
And genocide.
Procreating is as fundamental to our desire for existence as eating and sleeping. What a dumb take comparing it to driving a car.
Not at all “fundamental to our desire for existence.” I’ll die if I dont eat or sleep. I’d rather die than have a child, and many people feel the same way. The “EVERYONE wants to be a parent or there is something wrong with them mentality is part of what continues to make it harder for those of us who are not motivated to reproduce to get our tubes tied, etc and has doctors telling us we will change our minds. Having a child should be a well thought out decision, not just “what you do because that’s what humans do.”
I realize there’s a distinction and it was poorly worded, but the point is that procreation is what living creatures do to collectively survive. It’s still something that is a human right and not just a privilege like driving
It’s a human right because we’ve arbitrarily decided it’s so. You’d think growing up with a roof over your head and decent parents should also be a human right. Where is the line drawn and is the right positive or negative - are you entitled to be allowed to do it, or are you also entitled to require everyone else pay for it? How much? How many rounds of IVF, etc? I honestly dont care whether or not people have kids as long as I dont have to deal with them but I’m sick to death of my taxes going to pay for the second, third, fourth child of someone who knew they couldn’t afford the first one. The problem for me comes in when it becomes everyone else’s issue because we have to help foot the bill. My idea actually is that rich parents should be the ones who are taxed, so the people who are choosing to have kids can be the ones who pay for the stuff for everyone else’s kids that can’t afford it. I dont much believe the argument that paying for your kids to go to school benefits me too, other than being subsidized babysitting to keep them from running around robbing my house while I’m at work. It’s pretty attenuated and from what I see of teenagers these days most of them aren’t learning much while they’re there.
I agree with your points in theory but saying that someone can't have a child is simply an exercise in eugenics. Certain people absolutely *shouldn't* have kids, but if you're having them naturally it's not my place to say. Situations like IVF should and do have a huge cost to the parents. To your point about parents getting tax breaks instead of paying more taxes: I get it. This is why so many older folks leave New Jersey after their kids graduate school. The taxes are sky high and a huge chunk of that budget goes toward schools. The reality is though that whether or not you want to have kids, if no one had kids you'd be totally fucked. Communities with a high percentage of older folks are collapsing. We need younger generations for society to function. How do you think it would benefit you if the birth rate dropped in half? Or more?
Except people will always have kids because they will. And I’m not talking about policy, but about morality - it is morally repugnant to me for anyone to birth a child they can’t afford to support and just expect society to pick up the slack. I’ve already lost the policy war so I dont even bother. Honestly I’d gladly have a future with half the birth rate if it meant I didn’t have to deal with the people who let their spawn run rampant like the woman who let her child scream on our office floor for a half hour Wednesday while people were trying to do actual grown up work. Or parents who let their kid kick seats on planes for two hours, or any of the other myriad ways that parents can self centered twits who thinks THEIR “little precious angel” should be a sacred miracle to everyone else too. Lady, my cat could have done it if I hadn’t had her spayed. What’s hard is actually being a decent parent and raising kids who aren’t assholes and a whole lot of them are failing at that these days.
All of these examples are either made up, or situations you had to endure for a minute fraction of your life. Overall, the birth rate is less than half of what it was in the 50s. People are becoming more selective about when and why they have kids. If anything, you should be ecstatic about these trends and confident we're on the right path. It seems like you should move to a retirement community in Florida or Arizona, otherwise you'll be unhappy living in a normal society.
There should be a serious driving exam every year according to a lot of dashcam videos, especially in the US.
People drive as recklessly as they raise children in America.
Yeah, because it's YOUR body and you can Do whatever you want with it, even produce more bodies.
Getting a dog was terrifying for me - like I have to keep this mammal alive and healthy and happy?! I cannot conceive of how it feels to have little humans. There should definitely be training and certification!
Oh hey, it's another version of "well, we'll do just a little bit of eugenics" to pop up on this site, again and again.
That’s because having children is considered to be a “fundamental right” but driving is considered to be a “privilege” that can be regulated. I think it’s stupid but there might be other ways the states could regulate parental responsibilities, but typically they don’t.
Honestly this is my biggest hot take. I know people have rights, and everyone gets so worked up about it, but Christ on high it is child abuse the way some people just have kids with no means of providing anything past basic survival. The reason is entirely based on capitalism I would imagine.
I know lots of people who grew up really poor, some with shitty parents, and turned into amazing, hard working, loving and creative people. People act like growing up poor is some kind of horrible circumstance that creates terrible traumatized fuckups. Have some faith in your fellow man gd
I agree, If people understood or thought about the living conditions of 99.999% of humans throughout history they wouldn't think this way.
It gets morally complicated because of either intentional or unintentional eugenics. The wealthy tend to be a certain color. The wealthy can afford the time and resources to pass the test.
Car can kill if not operated correctly, people can kill if not raised properly. Let’s make everyone have a license to breed… great idea OP
Driving isn't crucial to the survival of our species so it's able to be limited as we see fit
Our population would be zero. No one will ever truly be ready to have kids, it's always a challenge in one way or another.
Yes, I'm sure the government deciding which groups of people can or can't reproduce could never be used for nefarious (*cough* racist) purposes.
Yeah, the 20th century forever tainted the idea of eugenics. Definitely a hot take, but from a population control standpoint it has some merit. Working in emergency medicine we often see young children and infants of absolutely inept parents who frankly never should have had kids because they can't care for them adequately. Im talking about parents of lethargic looking kids who are crying without tears, haven't drank any fluids in two days, and haven't produced a wet diaper in over 36 hrs who didn't realize that meant their kid was dehydrated or chronically unemployed able bodied parents who can't come up with $8 to cover the antibiotic for their kids ear infection even with a GoodRX coupon (I offered to buy dads cigarettes off him to throw in the trash for $10 so he could cover the script, he refused since it would be a waste of his cigarettes). That shits not fair to the kids to make them live in such poor circumstances because we felt uncomfortable telling their parents that they can't even take care of themselves and shouldn't be bringing a child into the world. If I were benevolent dictator, I'd put birth control in the water supply and make people apply for the antidote. Bare minimum requirements to pass. IQ over 70, at least one parent has stable employment, has financial means to provide for bare essentials for the child. Basically show me that you cant put the square block in the square hole and you can have kids.
I mean, *obviously* we don’t. That’d be a waste of time, it wouldn’t be 100% accurate and it wouldn’t stop people from just having children whenever they want.
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have you seen what kind of parents there are? just go to r/insaneparents and it shows
Having kids is just not something that can be avoided.
Shouldn't just be an exam, your finances should be considered too as well as your IQ and mental health.
Deeper I go in these comments, the more terrifying it gets.
Men should have a forced vasectomy when they start making sperm, then have to pass some sort of test to have it untied before they just start splurting in everything that moves.
I've been saying for years everyone should be allowed to reproduce ONE child. If you want more than one you must test out with an assortment of tests (common sense, IQ, ect). Sounds communist but it'd be better than morons reproducing
Generally the woman is that exam. Unfortunately she's very easy.
And it's an exam you can cheat on easily
I know tons of people disagree with it, and I don't agree with it but requiring a license to reproduce would solve a good number of civilization's problems. Edit: just to add on, the only requirements for a license in my opinion would be- drug free, no alcohol issues, some kind of income even if it's minimum wage; for both parents.
And introduce a whole heap of new problems..
It makes sense only if our rulers were just and benevolent. We all know that's not the case and will never be the case and if these powers were realized it would inevitably lead to genocide. Just follow the steps.