board77

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081211/ap_ ... orida_girl" target="_blank

This story just breaks my heart, having heard about it for a while now.

It looks like they may have found her body.

Of course, Casey Anthony met or surpassed all of the very stringent and strict standards, laws and guidelines to have and raise a child in the USA.

Its a good thing for the rest of us that she did not want to do something really important like cut hair, sell real estate or go hunting.

What are you trying to say, sf? Do you think parents should be licensed? Do you really think that would prevent these sorts of things from happening?

Anyway, this is sad, even if the body isn't Caylee's; it will still be some sort of tragedy for someone (not the least of which being the child).

Very sad. I can only suppose this mother is mentally ill somehow.


Lali

Lalaith
I am simply stating an obvious fact of American life. Our society regulates, licenses and controls such activities as cutting or styling other persons hair, selling real estate, hunting of animals and a large number of other activities. To do many of these things, especially the occupational ones, you have to normally take some sort of learning classes, prove your worth to actually perform the activity, perhaps take a test, and pay money to the state for a license permitting you to do it. And even then there are laws and regulatory practices that you must follow and obey to keep doing that activity.

To become a parent, all you have to do is perfrom the simple act of sexual intercourse with another person and procreate. There are no standards to be a prospective parent. There is no course of learning to be a prospective parent. There is no internship or apprenticeship to be a prospective parent. There is no test to be a prospective parent. There is no license to be a prospective parent.

If someone from another civilization would come here and study this arrangement, what would they conclude about society placing the higher values on certain activities from these facts?

Is cutting hair more important than the care of another human being for the next two decades? Is selling real estate more important? Is selling stocks and bonds more important?

In the absence of established proof, I am not quick to conclude that a parent like the one in this Florida case is mentally ill. Some people are just five or six feet of stacked crap.

Do you think that parents should be required to have licenses? Or that hairdressers and real estate agents should no longer be required to have them?

What if someone applies for a parental license and is deemed unsuitable? How should it be enforced? Forced sterilization?

I see your point, however - parenting is a much, much more important calling than hairdressing or selling real estate - yet one requires a license and the other doesn't.

I don't believe that that is an expression of how we value each calling, however.

Well, we do have laws in place to assure that people who have shown themselves to be unsuitable parents are no longer allowed to raise their children. It is definitely a flawed system, but I don't think it's fair to say that anyone do whatever they want to their child and get away with it. I think it would be absurd and borderline authoritarian to require people to get some sort of certification or license before having a child. Because even in the example of say, a hairdresser, anyone can still cut hair. There's no law that forbids you from cutting hair. There's also no law that forbids you from selling your own house without a real estate agent. The regulations are in place to assure that customers can choose a hairdresser or real estate agent who knows what they're doing. The licenses aren't a requirement to practice the profession, in most cases, but they are a requirement if you want real customers. Even so, licensed hairdressers can be bad hairdressers. If you had to get a license to have children, you could still end up being a bad parent. And if you couldn't get a license to be a parent, but you had a child anyway, what would happen? Would you get that child automatically taken away and put in foster care?

It is a tragic story about the poor little girl who died. I feel for the rest of her family. But we shouldn't go overboard in reaction to events like this by putting the government in charge of deciding who can be a parent and who can't be one.

Take a ruler and draw a simple 10 inch line on a piece of paper. Place an X on either end. One end charts the present rules in the USA covering who can have a child. The other end represents a society in which this process is controlled, regulated and licensed by the government.

Like many things, there is a great deal of middle ground not yet explored.

The only problem with the rules in place (with the welfare of a child in mind) is that the parents have to prove themselves unfit, and the law has to catch them before something tragic happens. In the case of law, this is a good thing. I never liked the premise to the movie Minority Report because it went against our established rule of law (it was a good movie, though).

I'm not advocating licenses, or that the rules be changed to preempt bad parents, but it is something to worth noting, like sf's comments about what we as a society require licenses for, and what we don't.

Each year in the USA there are between 3 and 4 million reported cases of child abuse. Experts in that field estimate that for every reported case which is documented, there may be three more. If that is accurate, or anywhere near accurate, that adds up to some ten million or more cases each year in the USA.

We spend several years in the public school system mandating that every child learn Algebra. Five percent of jobs in America require a working knowledge of Algebra.

What percentage of kids in schools will somedy be parents?

Jude wrote:

Do you think that parents should be required to have licenses? Or that hairdressers and real estate agents should no longer be required to have them?

What if someone applies for a parental license and is deemed unsuitable? How should it be enforced? Forced sterilization?

Whose standards will we use to determine if someone is a fit parent?

Perhaps you misunderstand me: I think it would be appalling to require parents to be pre-approved.

again..... draw a line ten inches long on a piece of paper..... at one end of that continuum is the present standards for becoming a parent -- NOTHING
at the other end of the continuum is a system where you have to be approved ,tested and licensed by the government....

hs anyone ever stopped to think about what is in the middle ten inches of that line and why in our society it is like it is?

What else could be on that continuum for the betterment of society, families and kids?

So what do you suggest?

Since the vast majority of people that go through our school system will someday become parents, why not spend some of that time educating them about the subject?

5% of actual jobs in America require a working knowledge of Algebra. But yet we persist in the folly of teaching just about all of them Algebra and even higher more useless forms of math.

Maybe a change in priorities would be useful?

You know, actually, that is a good idea (sort of). It would still be problematic to decide whose standards you would use on "good parenting," but some education would be good. We used to have childhood development classes in our public school. We all took at least a quarter of it. (It's the class where we carried around an egg for a week, pretending it was a baby.) Have they gotten rid of these classes in schools? What about health class? (And, because you know I can't resist saying it, homeschooling is particularly good at teaching this aspect of life. )

To be clear, I strongly oppose licensing parents or anything like that. That is a very scary thought to me! Educating kids about real life and how to cope with it is a good thing, though.

Lali

Jude wrote:

Perhaps you misunderstand me: I think it would be appalling to require parents to be pre-approved.

And I'm agreeing with you by pointing out an additional problem.

Lalaith - I am glad you see the wisdom in education in this area. I think some schools still have limited programs of the one you remember. The problem is that they are indeed limited... both in scope and in time. We need to start teaching children about relationships at a much earlier age. Parenting skills and relationship skills should not me merely a unit or two in a Heath class. It needs to be a yearly part of a full curriculum.

Here is another idea: we give people and companies tax breaks for all kinds of things. Why not give people a tax credit or break for taking classes as adults in how to be good parents?

I think it should be a complete how do be an adult class. i.e. how to balance a check book, understanding credit issues, how to buy a house, the importance of being a good citizen as well as parenting classes.

I know it takes on some of the roles that parents should be doing, but looking around the nation I have to think that parents are failing miserably in some of those aspects. The kids could be tested if they have some understanding of the importance of parenting and responsiblity they could opt out of the classes.

I tend to think that most people need a basic understanding of good writing skills and good reading and math skills at a basic level. Where I am at most people work for the oil field or the coal mine/power plants. Most of those jobs pay well, and most don't require a high school diploma. However, all those people need to know how to balance a check book, how to keep their credit good, and some may need parenting skills.


Back to the topic now.

They are sendig the remains off for DNA testing. It is my understanding that Caylee had been tested when she was born because of paternity issues, so finding out if these remains are hers should just be a matter of time.

sauronsfinger wrote:

Why not give people a tax credit or break for taking classes as adults in how to be good parents?

Or it could be wrapped up in a standard pre-natal care regimen.

The big problem with actually licensing people to be parents is, unlike anything else you can be licensed for, becoming a parent can happen by accident. Birth control fails. Bodies play dirty tricks. And so on. Even educated people who know better can find themselves pregnant without planning. So what do you do to prevent that without breaches of privacy so extreme they're usually plot points in dystopian novels or current events in China? The short answer is you don't.

Riverthalos... that is a great idea.
But I would not stop there. Its a basic principle of education that a person cannot really learn anything until they are ready to learn it. Being a responsible and good parent is a long process that takes place over decades. There is no reason why classes cannot be offered for parents at each and every stage of a childs development so that it is a continuing and building process.

And the ideas of Ara-anna on basic consumer skilles are right on the money. We badly need that. I remember hearing from an expert at some educational conference the figure for what percentage of people had the correct balance in their checkbook at any given time --- it was really low.