How government destroys parenthood: Reuven Brenner

It is well known that animals raised in zoos have problems mating and surviving in the wild. It appears that not only they do not learn from their parents in the zoo but with such parents not having had 'natural parenting' either the new generation is utterly disoriented. Until recently though government biologists in the US claimed big success in having been able to teach Whooping Cranes to migrate and cite this as example of 'human social engineers' being able to set example of good parenting in the animal kingdom. The experience is now over the government scientists admitting total failure and closing the program. Here is what happened.

Scientists have been raising Whooping Crane chicks for 15 years disguising themselves in Whooping Crane costumes. They tried to teach them to migrate to other humans in similar bird-disguise with pilots in disguise costumes too flying ultra-light aircraft leading the birds to the promised land of South of Florida.

Peter Fasbender the program's supervisor admits that all the birds turned out to be lousy parents: 'They copulate they know how to lay eggs but they are just incapable of parenting.' They are just not learning how to be parents from other cranes and after 15 years Fasbender concludes 'they just do not get it.' The birds wander from their eggs exactly like many deadbeat welfare fathers or mothers do. Subsidized schools offer no remedies for parents lacking parenting skills.

When parenting perhaps we must remember Cole Porter's famous lyrics 'Birds do it bees do it; Even educated fleas do it; Let’s do it let’s fall in love' and also Stephen Sondheim's 'Careful the things you say; Children will listen careful the things you do; Children will see and learn; Children may not obey but children will listen; Children will look to you for which way to turn; Learn what to be; Careful before you say ‘Listen to me.‘'

Yes making babies is easy. Parenting is not. It is the biggest debt that responsible parents have been undertaking and as leverage disciplines management so did such self-leverage discipline parents. That is until the government moved heavily into the business weakening even eliminating personal responsibility for this debt.

Bureaucrats and academia forgot the simple fact that kids do not ask to be born: they do not owe anything to anybody. The parents bring them to life whatever the reason. If the kids turn out to be good to their parents during rainy days have a sense of obligation that's fine. That may be due to their parents' skills in parenting passed down generations through observation having been forgotten.

Remember King Lear passing on his kingdom to his 'loving' daughters? Once the daughters put their hands on it they threw their father to the dogs. Shakespeare was on to something about the unwritten intricacies of parenting skills.

All the numerical evidence combined with the cultural ones shed light on the unintended disastrous consequences of well intentioned policies the declining birth rates in western countries being just one of them. Perhaps it’s time to change them fast and drastically.

An example would be complementing 'sex education' with the far more important 'parenting classes.' Then drastically change welfare programs so that hormone-raged teenagers can’t easily flee their parents' homes have kids get eternal assistance unable ever to set example of the discipline that making a living requires or to teach their own kids any discipline. Last but not least have institutions national service or mandatory military teach younger generations that rights come with obligations.

These changes would help gradually to create a new generation of responsible parents. At the same time if the goal is for already responsible parents to have more kids there are other options that can be explored. Former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio proposed a tax plan that would let working parents deduct the costs of raising kids. His argument was that if companies are allowed to deduct R&D which hold promise for their future then why not allow such deduction for kids who are the future. But a better alternative would be to lower tax rates allowing more scope to what parents can do rather than further complicating the tax code.

Reuven Brenner holds the Repap Chair at McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management. The article draws on his books. The last one is A World of Chance.

The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Asia Times.

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