Licensing Parents to Protect Our Children

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12901938
AutoresJurgen De Wispelaere (0000-0002-9117-772X, John Deere (Germany), autor correspondente), Daniel Weinstock (0000-0002-3709-0818)
Ano2012
Volume6
Fascículo2
Páginas195-205
Data de publicação2012-05-29
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEthics and Social Welfare (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1749-6535 • E-ISSN: 1749-6543
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17496535.2012.682507
OpenAlexW2071791336
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas8

In this paper we re-examine Hugh LaFollette's proposal that the state carefully determine the eligibility and suitability of prospective parents before granting them a ‘license to parent’. Assuming a prima facie case for licensing parents grounded in our duty to promote the welfare of the child, we offer several considerations that complicate LaFollette's radical proposal. We suggest that LaFollette can only escape these problems by revising his proposal in a way that renders the license effectively obsolete, a route he implicitly adopts in his recent revisiting of the licensing proposal. We conclude that there is little merit in the idea of licensing ‘natural’ parents as a practical policy proposal, and raise some questions about its continued use in relation to adoptive and foster parents. Keywords: AdoptionChild ProtectionChild WelfareLaFolletteLicensingParenting Acknowledgements We are grateful to Nir Eyal, Mike Timms, two anonymous referees for this Journal, and in particular Gideon Calder for discussion and comments on a previous draft of this article. Notes 1Somewhat controversially, we have good reason to think that creating a new child implies a higher burden of responsibility than raising an already existing child, since bringing a new child into the world implies a serious risk of harm to a child that otherwise would not have existed (Benatar Citation2010). This suggests the criteria for becoming a natural parent should be stricter than becoming a foster or adoptive parent, demanding a reversal of existing policies. 2A referee of this journal correctly pointed out that the general principle of not interfering with natural parenting does not apply in cases where there is a clear presumption that the welfare of the child might be negatively affected. Examples of such ‘risk categories’ include expectant parents with severe (cognitive) disabilities, long-term drug addicts, violent offenders and those registered on the sex offender registry, and parents who already had previous children removed and put into social care. Nevertheless, state interference in those cases still falls short of a general licensing scheme. 3The state also appears to distrust adoptive or foster families from taking equally good care of the children in their charge, but the evidence on ‘parental investment’ contradicts this assumption (Hamilton et al. Citation2007). 4LaFollette was not the first to do so: John Stuart Mill entertained the idea of licensing parents in On Liberty (Citation1978, pp. 106–7). See also Westman (Citation1994), Irvine (Citation2003), Title (Citation2004), and McFall (Citation2009). 5LaFollette (1980, p. 190) is adamant that these tests work fine, provided we only test for identifying really bad parents and not for determining good parents. In this way he hopes to avoid complications due to different parenting styles. We return to the problem of test accuracy and reliability below. 6We abstract from special cases, such as those living in remote areas without suitable public transport alternative, or disabled individuals who may have to rely comparatively more on private transport when the public alternatives are insufficiently accessible. These cases pose special problems, but the solution is not to reduce licensing restrictions but instead to make public transport more available or accessible. 7What if a person does not feel that there exists a reasonable substitute to being a surgeon? For whatever reason she has always dreamed of being a surgeon, and nothing else will do! In our view, this amounts to a form of expensive taste, not unlike Dworkin's (Citation2000) famous example of Louis having a taste for plover eggs and pre-phyloxera claret, which society is under no obligation to accommodate. Such an expensive taste for being a surgeon is perhaps comparable to a taste for being the parent of a child with very specific features (extremely talented, gorgeous, very bright, and so on), rather than merely being a parent. Here too society is under no obligation to accommodate prospective parents’ expensive tastes. We are grateful to a referee for pressing us to elaborate on this point. 8This is of course not to deny that the state and most importantly children may have interests in addition to those of the parent sufficient to ground rights. The point here is merely to argue that parents have strong interests in parenting of their own. Note also that these interests do not depend on any ownership rights of parents over children (pace LaFollette Citation1980, Citation2010). 9Brighouse and Swifts's arguments only establish a right to parent a child, not necessarily their own child. But the argument can be extended to include the stricter right to parent one's own child (Gheaus Citation2011). 10False positives are those individuals who are wrongly flagged as being incompetent (they are in fact competent). 11Sandmire and Wald (1990) direct their criticism primarily at Mangel (Citation1988), who developed the philosophical insights of LaFollette by suggesting the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (PAPI) and the Family Stress Test could serve as appropriate testing instruments for a licensing scheme in the US. 12What follows is indebted to the excellent article by Engster (2010). See also Sandmire and Wald (1990) and Archard (1993). 13Neither does it prevent men from doing so, but we assume here that children typically will either live with both parents or in the case of single-parent households with the mother. In either case, the mother becomes the natural focus of a parental licensing scheme. 14We find little solace in LaFollette's (2010, p. 339) suggestion that public acceptance of the scheme would mean ‘those who failed the course would feel social pressure to retake the course before becoming parents’. 15We develop this line of argument more fully elsewhere (De Wispelaere & Weinstock 2010)

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