There's the old saying that parenting is the biggest job for which no one gets any education.
We could benefit from required participation in parental courses for every pregnant woman.
But even that improvement would likely be inadequate.
Having children you care little about is one of the dark, little-examined areas of society, but it goes on all the time.
Really slothful parents, as any conscientious teacher who has dealt with them knows, are virtually hopeless.
They often themselves are repositories of the same terrible behaviors they inflict on others with their uncared for children.
I do believe in many or most cases, we are seeing the results of low effective intelligence and/or serious mental disease.
These are genetic conditions, not learned ones.
I do believe that one day, in advanced societies, people will have to be licensed to have children, basic behavioral and economic qualifications being established. It is a measure that would virtually empty our prisons and greatly improve the quality of public schools.
We do not permit some people to do so simple an act as legally drive. Why do we freely allow people to dump at great cost troubled children they are unqualified to have?
