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book read
William B. Irvine, The Politics of Parenting (Paragon House, 2003).
I pulled this off the shelf with a bunch of other things months ago, thinking it was probably about the kinds of issues that Ann Crittenden (The Price of Motherhood) or Natalie Angier have written about. Um, nope. It's by a philosophy professor, and is an exercise in logic and devil's-advocation, with three main points: government should forbid or discourage dysgenic couples (i.e. those likely to produce a child with a genetic disease) from reproducing; government should license parents in much the same way that adoptive parents are screened, and unlicensed people who produce a child should have the child taken away and put up for adoption by the state; and government should regulate parental behavior more thoroughly, especially by repealing no-fault divorce laws, which he argues have been the main engine of anti-child societal changes in the past 50 years. This book sometimes amused me and sometimes appalled me. The author displays some stunning naievete: he appears to believe that the 1950s were a golden age of childhood, that Leave It To Beaver was every family in America, and that no children were poor, hungry, abused, molested, had alcoholic or unwed parents, etc. in those days. Riiiiight. Also, the man is a self-identified libertarian, and yet he spends an entire books arguing that the government should do X and Y, often highly complex things that will cost VAST sums (who will pay for all this genetic testing? who will create the parenting license, administer it? have you BEEN to the DMV lately?). Buddy, if you seriously beleive this stuff and want to be taken seriously, you'll have to do more than present a set of logical exercises designed to persuade undergraduates.
I pulled this off the shelf with a bunch of other things months ago, thinking it was probably about the kinds of issues that Ann Crittenden (The Price of Motherhood) or Natalie Angier have written about. Um, nope. It's by a philosophy professor, and is an exercise in logic and devil's-advocation, with three main points: government should forbid or discourage dysgenic couples (i.e. those likely to produce a child with a genetic disease) from reproducing; government should license parents in much the same way that adoptive parents are screened, and unlicensed people who produce a child should have the child taken away and put up for adoption by the state; and government should regulate parental behavior more thoroughly, especially by repealing no-fault divorce laws, which he argues have been the main engine of anti-child societal changes in the past 50 years. This book sometimes amused me and sometimes appalled me. The author displays some stunning naievete: he appears to believe that the 1950s were a golden age of childhood, that Leave It To Beaver was every family in America, and that no children were poor, hungry, abused, molested, had alcoholic or unwed parents, etc. in those days. Riiiiight. Also, the man is a self-identified libertarian, and yet he spends an entire books arguing that the government should do X and Y, often highly complex things that will cost VAST sums (who will pay for all this genetic testing? who will create the parenting license, administer it? have you BEEN to the DMV lately?). Buddy, if you seriously beleive this stuff and want to be taken seriously, you'll have to do more than present a set of logical exercises designed to persuade undergraduates.
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The combination of my pregnancy and taking Family Law last fall meant that I spent a lot of time thinking about parenting and divorce last year. My libertarian side is a big supporter of no-fault divorce. It seems stupid to me that the state would try to force people to stay in a living situation that made them unhappy. OTOH, I read so many cases last year where children's lives were ripped apart because theur parents couldn't work out their problems. The only conclusion I came to is that 1) I have no answer for society and 2) I will do everything in my power to make sure my daughter never ends up in a situation like that.