Parenting licenses: An evil but essential necessity

With the spate of tragedies involving children, parents should be made to sit for and pass an exam before being allowed to bring a child into this world.

COMMENT

By Gayatri Unsworth

After witnessing all sorts of unbelievable incidents and then reading about even more disturbing occurrences, I believe the time has come for us to introduce a mandatory parenting license here in Malaysia.

Whilst I realise that this would probably qualify as a human rights violation, allowing the powers that be to further meddle into the personal affairs of its citizens, I am somewhat optimistic that, with the compelling reasons I am about to provide, this license will be seen as an evil but essential necessity.

After all, if we have to take extensive lessons and sit for both theoretical and practical tests before being allowed to drive, surely we should be required to demonstrate acceptable standards before being allowed to go forth and procreate.

Considering that having a child is an extremely serious endeavour with significant, far-reaching consequences, compared to merely driving about in a vehicle, I would argue that every Malaysian planning on having offspring be made to prove their parenting competency, before actually being allowed to bring a child into the world.

The parenting license I propose, will be awarded upon successful completion of a test. In order to study and adequately prepare for the test, all license applicants will be offered a standard textbook. Applicants will not have to worry about the quality of the textbook, as in keeping with most textbooks available in the country, this too will contain strong racially derogatory undertones, a generous number of stereotypical characters representing the major ethnic groups and an abundance of bad grammar.

This parenting license proposal, along with weeding out incompetent would-be-parents, would also be a boon to the nation’s economy. Think about the number of tuition centres and other relevant bodies that could be set up to purely cater to individuals preparing to obtain their parenting license. It would be a very productive initiative indeed.

The implementation of a mandatory parenting license may to many sound like a far-fetched, ludicrous notion but if we were to consider the ways in which children are quite often “cared” for in this country, then it may perhaps not seem so preposterous after all. I, for one, in all seriousness, am just genuinely sick and tired of hearing about the many instances in which children are forced to pay the price, sometimes with their own lives, for their parents’ folly.

One horrible tragedy after another

We have witnessed a steady stream of tragic incidents, where children have been fatally injured or critically hurt. Unfortunately many of these stem entirely from parental negligence.

In the immediate aftermath, parents express immense regret, the public throws up its arms in absolute outrage and disbelief, the police begin investigations and there is a flurry of criticism and condemnation, but then, not long after, everyone resumes their daily lives, until of course another completely avertable tragedy occurs and the entire process is repeated.

I constantly witness young children dangling precariously off motorbikes, their little heads bobbing about in the air, whilst their parents’ heads are secure in helmets. I fully understand the economic limitation of not being able to purchase a safer mode of transportation, but if one can afford to have children, then surely one can afford to also buy a helmet for them?

Malaysian cars, I have also noticed, serve as jungle-gyms. It is not unusual to see children jumping about inside cars, unrestrained and swinging all over the place, sometimes even hanging perilously out of the windows. For that extra adrenaline rush, the parent will also be often-times driving well above the speed-limit, even in hazardous weather conditions.

Why spend unnecessary money on indoor-amusement parks when you can do it for free all day, every day. In any case, Malaysian roads are generally very safe. We only had 521,466 road accidents that killed merely 7,152 people last year, so it makes perfect sense to allow children to bounce about unrestrained in a speeding car.

Child-car seats are not yet mandatory in this country, and therefore not widely used but that’s no big deal because many Malaysian babies and toddlers have access to a very special, different sort of seat when travelling in cars; their parents laps. Because the best candidate to be seated behind a wheel, inside a moving vehicle alongside other moving vehicles, would of course be one with a still somewhat floppy neck and partially formed skull. Obviously.

Parental negligence is not only evident on our roads, it is also vastly apparent in most other aspects of Malaysian life. How many children have fallen to their deaths, after innocently and curiously standing at the top of escalators, on balconies and near railings, blissfully unaware of the hazardous circumstances surrounding their actions?

Parental supervision virtually unheard of

Let us consider the children meandering about without adult supervision, on side-walks, in pasar malams and inside shopping malls. How many have been snatched and subjected to heinous crimes after being heedlessly let out of their parents sights?

How many kids have been unnecessarily traumatised and critically injured due to the pure negligence of those tasked with the very responsibility of looking after them?

How many young adolescents are out and about late into the night, engaging in unsafe and sometimes illegal activities with their parents completely unaware of their whereabouts?

Whilst all parents undoubtedly love their children, the sad reality is that the great depth of that love is not always matched with the same degree of care and involvement.

In a week where eight teenagers lost their lives and a number of their friends were critically injured after racing their modified bicycles dangerously at an hour when they should have been at home asleep, we must ask ourselves what else could and should have been done to prevent such a tragedy from unfolding in the first place.

It is therefore really about time that we set the bar a little higher, raise our expectations and demand a more stringent commitment to parental duties and responsibilities. Regret and compunction alone are not enough. They never have been.

Gayatri Unsworth is an FMT columnist.