Parental Licensing Good in Theory, but Not in Practice...

In his essay "Licensing Parents,"Hugh Lafollette does a great job making his argument, creating potential objections, and then responding to those objections. Despite his very clear rationale, I may have to disagree with his proposal that all parents be licensed. My first objection is that there is a great potential for abuse of the test, rendering it invalid. He addresses this objection saying that perhaps administrators would fail potential parents they didn't like, but that those potential parents could retake the test. My issue is with the contrast: that potential parents, given the opportunity to retake the test, could learn to beat the test (no pun intended). Therefore, unsuitable parents could achieve licenses with a little work. My second issue is another that he addresses, but unsatisfactorily. Despite the good intentions of this process, it is entirely possible, and probable, that people will conceive children outside of this system. The analogy he makes to doctors practicing medicine doesn't hold up because one can still conceive a child without a license. He briefly mentions the possibility of taking away a child conceived outside of the licensing system. I am strongly opposed to this idea. This would be traumatic for both parents and children. His idea of creating incentives for licensed parents addresses this potential complication, but then completely defeats the purpose of the initial proposal. If a parent can have a child without a license and suffer only higher taxes, etc., bad parents can still reproduce. Without licensing being mandatory, children could still potentially be born to abusive parents. And because I don't think the licensing can be made mandatory, since people can still conceive without it, the proposal falls short.