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New
Hampshire to License Parents?
©
2003 Benjamin D. Garber, Ph.D.
Dear Mr. Lynch,
Congratulations on your inauguration as the eightieth governor
of New Hampshire. Along with so many of your constituents, I wish you the
best of luck in serving the needs of the people of this fine state.
I am aware that you were elected on a platform which includes
a commitment to the children and families of our state. I share your commitment.
I have a proposal.
You now have the resources and the opportunity to make New Hampshire
first in more than just presidential politics. It is now within your power
to make New Hampshire first in its proactive commitment to family life and
to our future, first in its recognition that the quality of parenting today
determines the quality of all of our tomorrows. You are now in a position
to be the first in the nation –if not in the world- to institute parental
licensure.
We know that healthy families tend to raise healthy children.
We know that well-informed, sensitive, firm and consistent parents tend to
raise children who finish school, who stay away from drugs and alcohol and
who lead healthy and productive lives themselves.
We know that unhealthy families tend to raise unhealthy children.
We know that dysfunctional, uninformed, over-punitive and rejecting parents
tend to raise children who take out their anger and insecurities on themselves
and on the society around them. We know that these children are less likely
to graduate from high school, less likely to hold down a job and less likely
to maintain their own stable relationships and to raise healthy children.
These children are more vulnerable to peer pressure, more likely to abuse
substances, to become involved in the criminal justice system and to divorce.
And we know that the social and economic costs of that part
of our population which is under-educated, vocationally unstable, drug-dependent,
criminally involved and/or raising children in single-parent families is huge.
High school drop-outs typically fail to maintain consistent and adequate incomes,
bloating unemployment doles and welfare lines. Substance dependence and criminal
involvement clogs hospitals and courtrooms, costing millions of tax-payer
dollars. Worst of all, the children of these parents are far more likely
to require special education services in school, social service intervention
at home and more frequent and intensive medical services as they grow.
Mr. Governor, you can choose to continue to invest our precious
and limited resources only to react to these spiraling costs, to build more
courtrooms and hospitals, to fund more remedial services and reactive agencies.
But there is an alternative. You can work to change one of the many roots
of these problems. You can invest in improving the quality of our families
before they deteriorate into dysfunction. You can institute a program of parental
licensure.
Parental licensure? Its not a new idea. Others before
have advocated for mandatory training and licensure of parents much the same
way that the state requires training and licensure of many professions. But
mandatory programs invite punitive responses. A lawyer who practices without
a license can be disbarred. A physician who practices without a license can
be prosecuted. But parents?
No, mandatory parent training and parental licensure is untenable.
We must never accept a government that seeks to control the family by dictating
who can and who cannot have children, least of all here in the ‘live free
or die’ state.
We can, however, create incentives and invest in opportunities
for parents to improve their parenting skills, recognizing that by acting
now we might avoid the need to react at to fra greater problems later, at
far greater costs. We can do this by establishing an annual parental licensure
opportunity and motivate parents to participate through financial incentives.
Money moves people. Unfortunately, the promise of a healthier
family and a healthier future is seldom enough. Parents who might never otherwise
find the time or have the interest in improving their parenting skills would
be far more likely to do so if they saw a real financial advantage. Call it
a quality parenting credit, an annual tax advantage accrued by those who earn
state validated parent training certification each year. In the short run,
the costs of establishing these opportunities would be paid by the greater
costs incurred by those who fail to participate. In the long run, the savings
in programs like the Division for Children Youth and Families, the state correctional
and juvenile justice systems and in the family courts surely would be enough
to make this program self-sustaining and a model to the nation.
The curriculum? The greatest challenge inherent
in instituting parental licensure is determining what skills to license. At
the outset, the basics are clear:
1. Children are people, no matter their age, and all
people deserve respect.
2. Children learn by example.
3. Children’s thinking, feeling and relationships change as they
grow.
4. Children must have permission to express their thoughts and
feelings.
5. Children must feel that they are loved and accepted no matter
what.
As obvious as these five points may seem, they are not. Far
too many parents need to be taught these simple facts, often because they
did not grow up with them themselves.
I hold that if every family in the State of New Hampshire lived
by these five basics alone, the incidence of childhood depression and anxiety
would fall dramatically. When children are less depressed and anxious, they
learn better, thereby reducing the need for very time- and labor- and dollar-intensive
special education services. These changes also mean less conflict in the home
which, in turn, means lower costs associated with child protective services,
family conflict resolution services and family court judges.
But this is only the beginning. As your parental licensure initiative
expands, more elaborate training can become available. Courses can be aimed
at specific developmental periods (parenting toddlers or adolescents, for
example), family issues (coping with divorce, remarriage or adoption, as examples)
and special needs (parenting the demanding child). Parents seeking to improve
their caregiving skills and reduce their tax burden will have a choice of
specialty training opportunities while renewing their New Hampshire State
Quality Caregiving License.
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Parenting Pointer ---------------------------
If you share my belief that improving the quality of parenting
throughout our state will improve the quality of our future, mail this article
and your thoughts to Governor Lynch today at:
Governor
Lynch
107 N. Main Street, Room 208-214
Concord, New Hampshire 03301-4990
603-271-2121
Will Mr. Lynch
actually initiate a tax incentive-based parental licensure program? Probably
not. But you can work to improve parenting in your home, your neighborhood,
your school and your community every day. Practice these five parenting basics
and teach them to the other parents you know. Open a dialogue with your co-parents
and friends about quality parenting. Start a book group or discussion
group focused on developing new parenting skills. Never be too shy or too
embarrassed to tell a friend about your latest crisis at home and ask how
he or she might have handled it. In this grass roots way, we will improve
our parenting skills and, in so doing, improve the quality of our future.
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facsimile 603.879.9070 