Our society has regulations and policies that govern the activities that we do. Some of these activities need approval before venturing into them such as law, medicine and pharmacy. Drivers, doctors, lawyers and psychologists conduct activities which might harm human beings and hence need to be subjected to scrutiny procedures which test their proficiency before being allowed to venture into them. The safety of the human beings cannot be compromised by the acute inconveniences that it might cause from the denying of such individuals the license to chase their dream. In order to be granted the opportunity to run such activities, then they ought to qualify and pass the competence tests to avoid harm which pose danger to the lives of people. However, the competence tests may not be 100% accurate as competent people may tense and fail the test while other incompetent ones can luckily show prowess in some aspects under test. This means that some faulty regulations can crop up in the due process of testing competency and hence the process must be repeated severally to yield the best outcome (McFall and Thomas, p.79).
Parenting also can be harmful to children and hence should be subjected to the same regulatory policies. Parents may physically abuse their children, neglect them or deny them the chance to have the feeling of self-worth and hence parenting qualifies to be subjected to the same regulatory controls to ensure that children are not exposed to harm as they desire a happy living. Some factors may render the regulation of the parents and other professionals unnecessary to be regulated but the reasons of objections should not be implemented. People will argue that the right to have children was the choice of the parents and it was their right to do so just like they have the right of freedom and speech. Licensing them to have children then might sound unjust. The governmental intrusion into the lives of individuals is a wary. The right to have children might be interpreted in an ambiguous manner, but to me it means parents should be granted rights to have children if they are able to rear them without abusing them. Some people may be sentenced to jail terms just because they are liable to causing a harm such as the insane. Similarly, the parents being regulated on their competency to have children may be done on the perspective of that there is a probability of them causing harm to the children (McFall and Thomas, p.193).
Licensing can be viable theoretically but practically impossible. The criteria of choosing or distinguishing between a good and a bad parent is cumbersome and almost impossible and hence without a feasible predictive test, hence the licensing process might sound to be unjust. Testing the competency of the parent to bring up children without abusing them seems to be tiresome and a waste of time as the final verdict is subject to bias. It is hard to be almost accurate in testing the competencies of the parents as it is really hard to determine the possibility of the parent turning out to be harmful to the children. During interviews, the bad parents will pretend to be nice but at home the case be different. For the parents who want to adopt a child, the administration responsible for the issuance must subject the couple to a tight scrutiny to assure that they are ready and capable of raising a child (McFall and Thomas, p.283). However, such procedures might exclude parents who would have been good and absorb the pretense of others.
Work cited
Peg Tittle. Should Parents be Licensed?: Debating the Issues. Prometheus Books, 2004 - Family & Relationships - 364 pages
Michael McFall, Laurence Thomas. Licensing Parents: Family, State, and Child Maltreatment. Lexington Books, 16 Jan 2009 - Philosophy - 248 pages
