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Apr 24, 2007 10:51

This has to be the best article written by anybody EVER:

Maybe Parents Should Be Licensed

By Mike Harden
The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch

The cashier at the 24-hour supermarket flinched when she heard the man's command:

"Just kick his ass," ordered the guy accompanying the mom whose 3-year-old had grown weary of his elders' preoccupation with the store's video games and was beginning to fuss.

It was 4 a.m. The kid was tired.

Just kick his ass.

I got a better idea, perhaps best articulated by parenting expert Roger McIntire, father of three and author of Raising Good Kids in Tough Times:

"We license pilots … scuba divers, plumbers, electricians, teachers, veterinarians, cab drivers, soil testers and television repairmen. … Are our TV sets and toilets more important to us than our children?"

Ohio and its new governor have the opportunity to make a groundbreaking, lifesaving move: License parents.

The state requires a license for Ohioans to impale worms in the interest of outsmarting bass. It is illegal to carry a gun into the woods to bag a deer without being credentialed. I can't sell velvet Elvis paintings at an abandoned Sunoco station unless I've obtained a license.

We don't want the government meddling in our affairs, critics say.

I don't, either. But there is a middle ground.

Although I knew that none of my children would ever become arborists or reside in Bavaria, I submitted to the mandatory requirement that they master botany and learn to conjugate German verbs to earn a diploma (a fancy word for license). Why should I care, then, if public secondary schools and state universities require an intense application of classroom and field-work instruction in parenting?

"Too much of what should be taught by parents is already being handed off to schools," said Yvette McGee Brown, head of the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Children's Hospital. As a former Juvenile Court judge, she saw more homemade calamities than anyone should be asked to witness. And, while I differ with her on this issue, I respect her wisdom and sensibilities.

"It is unrealistic to think that the schools can teach children to be good parents," she continued. "We're already falling behind on the things youngsters need to know to get through school."

For her money, one of the best ideas is a program her center is launching involving a nurse-family partnership.

"Nurses work with low-income, first-time mothers for three years on a weekly basis," she explained. It begins with prenatal education and covers everything from self-care and nutrition to stress management and delaying a second pregnancy.

She dismissed my proposal of licensing, saying, "I don't know how, without becoming Orwell's 'Big Brother,' you could do it."

Maybe schools shouldn't carry the burden of preparing young adults to be licensed as parents. But parenting needs to be licensed somehow. We need public debate on how to do it.

Wouldn't it be great if the public energy expended protecting a baby still six months from birth could be as passionately applied six months after birth?*

I hear the naysayers on licensing: Too much government. It's playing with fire. You can't teach in a classroom what requires real-world, inner-strength skills.

But the answer to failing to address the problem?

"Just kick his ass."

*Bold emphasis mine - I think this is an excellent point.
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