Draft for peer review
Requirement of "parent license" before you can have a child
Children from different social classes in US are raised by their parents using different caregiving methods. A "parent license" requirement to couples before they can have children would be controversial and could have negative effect in US population grow.
There are mounting evidences to support a link between "child abuses" or "discipline" as other may call it, and social status and religion believe. Social studies show that most religious parents would rely on source of information from their faith to raise their children. These parents who reach out to religion are more likely to use "didactic caregiving". Didactic caregiving involves diverse approaches parents use to inspire children to live within certain norms in which the child is only engaged with those who understand and embrace the same environment. This way of caregiving also provide the child with the opportunities to observe, to imitate, and to learn from his parents. Religious parents would want their children to grow up and follow their religion believes, hence, the necessity to raise these children according to their faith. This can be dangerous as the source of information these parents turn to can be harmful to their children. They are already many books based on religion or other believes that have sole purpose to guide parents to raise their children. Even though these sources of information have a purpose to help, they often are cited as the causes of many damages on children. A well-known example is the book "To Train Up A Child". Michael and Debi Pearl are the "ministers" behind No Greater Joy Ministries Inc., the organization is behind the book "To Train Up A Child", and this is used by some evangelical Christians as a parenting guide to teach their children complete obedience. "According to our research, "To Train Up A Child" promotes the practice of austere physical punishment and even starvation as a means of training children to be wholly submissive. Consequently, the number of deaths in the last seven years is counted to three children all adopted. The reasons of these fatal incidents have been attributed to use of the Pearls' book. 4-year-old Sean Paddock was killed by his adoptive mother Lynn Paddock in 2006, 7-year-old Lydia Schatz was killed by her adoptive parents Kevin and Elizabeth in 2010, and 13-year-old Hana Williams was killed by her adoptive parents Larry and Carri in 2011. In all three cases, the parents were convicted of murder. Alicia Bayer, who has written extensively about the Pearls for Examiner.com, notes that their training methods include:
Using plastic tubing to beat children, since it is "too light to cause damage to the muscle or the bone"
Wearing the plastic tubing around the parent's neck as a constant reminder to obey
"Swatting" babies as young as six months old with instruments such as "a 12-inch willowy branch," thinner plastic tubing or a wooden spoon
"Blanket training" babies by hitting them with an instrument if they try to crawl off a blanket on the floor
Beating older children with rulers, paddles, belts and larger tree branches
"Training" children with pain before they even disobey, in order to teach total obedience
Concerning our children, what now day's society calls "physical abuse", is referred to it by the older generation as "discipline". This "discipline" was tolerated in ancient time when most of these region doctrines were written. Therefore, most of the faith disciplinary advices related to how to raise our children can be controversial in our modern society.
Rich parents by contrast are often dedicated to give their children everything they (the children) can have. This class of parents are prone to use "Material caregiving". Material caregiving particularly points to the ways in which parents provide and manage their children's physical world including all accessories (toys, books, tools) houses and others. The level of interest of children on the materials provided by their parents wrestles down the time that these children spend in direct social interaction with close family members and others. This can give rise to negative consequences. The downfall of raising children by giving them too much of everything is that they may grow up and be materialist. Materialism is very popular in nowadays in our society. This may lead to people treasuring something over someone. The materialist may end up being lonely as his/her inner circle can be much narrowed. These issues often lead to alcohol and drug abuses which open doors of health deterioration, depression and a possible fatal consequence. There is nothing wrong to raise your children and give them everything they need to succeed, but a good balance and ethics awareness are crucial in the future well-being of children.
The middle class parents are more socially engaged with their children. Culture and extended family sometime have important role in the education of their children. This class of parents uses "social caregiving". Social caregiving incorporates different aspects that include the ways parents engage their children emotionally and manage the communication between them, this includes and not limited to kissing, heartening, articulating so on. These parents make their children feel valued by giving them positive feedback, listening while focusing in their goal of giving a level of discipline these children need to prevail in our society. For example, researches show "that adolescents from European-American and Hispanic-American authoritative homes perform well academically, and better than those coming from no authoritative households. However, school performance is similar for authoritatively and for no authoritatively reared Asian Americans and African Americans." (B. Marc 1998).
There are evidences that a "parent license" can reduces the confusion on how to raise a child, it also can help reduce child abuses and other related incidents. But this does not come without consequences. According to David Lykken who suggested the idea of "parent license", the license would require proof of: 1) Legal age 2) Marriage 3) Employment or economic independence 4) No history of violent criminal behavior. This means that the target demography is not only parents that seek information at the wrong place, but also the teenage parents, the unmarried couples, any citizen who had a history of violence and mostly those who financially cannot afford to have children. The consequences of requiring a "parent license" before people can have children would be devastating in our diverse society and our way of life in general and may possibly be in conflict with our freedom of speech.
An implementation of a "parent license" would leave us with many questions raised by scholars that would need to be addressed. What happens to parents who do not get a license and have a child anyway? How can you sanction these parents without affecting the whole family? Can you punish a child for the mistakes of the parents? These questions put marks deep inside the problem we could be facing, these inquiries cannot be ignored if any tangible solution need to be seeded.
The consequences of implementing a "parent license" in US would be catastrophic in the country population grow. Statistic from US census bureau in 2014 shows that most of population grow in US come from minorities and in these communities, people often have children in early ages and before they get married. In addition, a descent count of the male population have criminal record or are in financial distress. This would give a significant percentage of people in these communities who would not qualify for a "parent license".
Finding a common ground to satisfy both the pros and cons of this debate may be possible in theory but unprovable to implement without interfering with our freedom and breaking any law. This is a continuous battle ground between those who believe that the right to have children comes with the basic right to exist and those who disagree. I believe that our desire to keep ourselves alive does not end on the wall of self-preservation, but extends its limits to reproduction. As selfish as these instincts can be, they are imbedded in our genes and they constitute some of the principal biological aspects of human beings. If there was to be a human beings first right, it would be assigned to the right of self-reservation and reproduction. Any such thing to put limitations or conditions to reproduction violate our basic right of existence and our instinctual desire to survive.
Source:
Marc H. Bornstein, "Refocusing on Parenting." Parenthood in America Edited by Jack C. Westman, M.D., n.d. web 1998, 03/25/3016 parenthood.library.wisc.edu/Bornstein/Bornstein.html
Castiglia, C "To Train Up a Child Parenting Book Leads to Multiple Child Deaths" babble .com, web 2014. 03/07/2016, babble.com/mom/to-train-up-a-child-teaches-punishment-that-kills-kids/
Hi Dimek, as I finish reading and understanding the research, I would like to note the positives as well as the negatives that might help enhance your research and will be useful for you future writing references.
Positives
- the introduction is well structured, you have stated a very well mannered argument and this starts the research very well
- words are carefully selected in order to depict the right idea and not mislead the research
- paragraphs are bold not the usual short and crowded ones
- well structured sentences and the transition is smooth
Negative
- citation can still be improved by adding them or should I say incorporating them in the essay, this way the reader will not have to look through the citation part of the paper, I'm not saying that the citation page is not relevant, however, having the work cited is always a good booster when it comes to finding facts and the source of the essay.
Well, as you can see Dimek, that's pretty much for the negatives and this obviously does not outweigh the positives that should tell you that you have done a well written essay.
Good luck with the research and feel free to revise it to your hearts desire.
