Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket.
For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.
However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, detention centers, jails etc.
How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology and techniques to do better as parents. Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting that have been running in families for a long time (I write this as one such person).
I expect it will be hard (nay impossible) to institute a parenting license (like a driving license) in a democratic society. So instead have a strong incentive in the way of a financial grant for every parent who clears a parenting curriculum sometime before their child turns 1 (or some appropriate marker). Keep the freebees /incentives piling on during the kids childhood so parents are motivated to undertake "continuing education"
Parenting is truly important stuff - for many parents it is the most important responsibility we'll ever have in our lives- but we seem to leave it to chance to get the right outcomes.
For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.
However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, detention centers, jails etc.
How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology and techniques to do better as parents. Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting that have been running in families for a long time (I write this as one such person).
I expect it will be hard (nay impossible) to institute a parenting license (like a driving license) in a democratic society. So instead have a strong incentive in the way of a financial grant for every parent who clears a parenting curriculum sometime before their child turns 1 (or some appropriate marker). Keep the freebees /incentives piling on during the kids childhood so parents are motivated to undertake "continuing education"
Parenting is truly important stuff - for many parents it is the most important responsibility we'll ever have in our lives- but we seem to leave it to chance to get the right outcomes.