Brian,

For any idea to be worthy of consideration for serious discussion it needs to have element of practicality about it. Sadly neither this nor you last one meet this basic prerequisite.
• Who is going to decide?
• On what basis?
• Who is going to enforce it?
• Clearly this is a variant form of Eugenics. Do you really believe that under the current democracy the people would mandate a government with such powers? Etc.
Even as a piece of philosophic ethics it has fatal flaws.
Can I suggest that in future you tackle topics more akin to your experience base.

The whole child-bearing thing has been totally skewed by the bizarre baby bonus, which is most appealing to people with very low incomes, no saving ability or prospects, and statistically the most likely to produce dysfunctional children in dysfunctional families who will be an ongoing cost to society. Add into this mix the dysfunctional serial single mothers who do not know how to get by without a man, no matter how useless or abusive, and you have children being born who are not really wanted and who are at high risk of abuse or worse by step fathers.

Removing babies and mass-sterilisation is of course a ridiculous draconian proposal and no answer. Perhaps the solution offered by some US states would work where welfare is much harder to get and childcare and employment support is offered to women on the condition that they have no more children until they can care for them independently.

Hmmm..... How about compulsory castration of the author on the ground that what he is attempting and conspiring to do is abusive?

The problem is identifying the 'dangerous' households.

Well, actually it is easy, but not politically correct. Child abuse occours almost entirely in households missing one of the natural parents.

Risk factors for substiantiated child abuse
(Neglect, Physical, Emotional/psychological, Sexual)
- Households missing a natural parent 94%
- Household with both natural parents 6%
- Total 100%

Summarising this in it’s most stark terms, a child’s risk of abuse is increased by 23 times in households that are missing one of the child’s natural parents.

Putting this into perspective, we all believe smoking ‘causes’ lung cancer. Statistically, the risk of lung cancer in smokers is 120% that of non-smokers. But the risk of child abuse in single-parent households is 2300% times that of children living with both natural parents ! (96%/4% = 23) Children need BOTH NATURAL parents.

Child protection policies and procedures, combined with their organisational culture work together to effectively force natural fathers out of children’s lives. This increases the risk profile for these children by 2,300%!

Or to quote another study, reported in the Australian recently:
Quote "...children with a step-parent were at least 17 times more likely to die from intentional violence or accident. ... the rate could be as high as 77 times."

Quote "Dr Tooley said the findings appeared to back up theories that parents were biologically driven to be extremely protective of their offspring, less so than step-parents. The theory has widespread parlance in folklore and fairytales, such as that of Cinderella, who is banished to cleaning duties by her jealous step-mother and sisters.

Citations available PartTimeParent@pobox.com

Very brave thing to write Brian. As expected the humanists are savage in their rejection and loud in their disgust. Of course, few of them will ever know the screams that is a newborn coming off heroin shortly after birth, to pick one of many possible examples.

In a world coming to grips with overpopulation, enviromental strain and a "gap between rich and poor" which in western nations is also hte "gap between intelligent and not quite so", the idea of licenced births is not something that should be dismissed with no more than a righteous scream of "human rights!".

Through our humanity and western welfare states we have created an underclass of borderline intelligence who would simply not have survived in earlier eras, and encouraged them to populate. The movie Idiocracy is supposed to be a comedy, but when you flick through the channels on TV - aimed at the average consumer of mindless entertainment - you have to wonder if it wont one day be called a documentary.

partTimeParent

Thanks for your positive contribution to the issue. I realise that I have implied that men with self-control problems are a danger to their children. They are indirectly, as the real danger comes from the de facto who has stepped in after the natural father has done a runner.

So my mandatory vasectomy proposal would be aimed at those men who have no concept of family i.e. the running type. The selection process would start with the police who keep a list of no-hopers - and from there to the psychologists. Of those to be psychologically assessed, determining who has not a clue about decent behaviour is not rocket science.

Jai

You refer to the humanists who have made comments. They are not humanists. They are bloggers. Humanists are people such as John Pilger and Philip Nitschke who are heroes of mine. The likes of Diocletian who has suggested that I be castrated are of interest to social scientists as the blogging phenomenon spreads throughout the world.

Now, Diocletian believes that the moral plane I occupy is so far below that of his own, that I disgust him. What interests the behavioural scientists is the satisfaction Diocletian gets out of using free space provided but such websites as OLO to announce to the world that he is superior type of person – when nobody knows who poor old Diocletian is.