Monday 22 January 2007

New Government Scheme - Child Licence

I'm currently doing a 7 week paediatrics firm, 2 weeks in I've come up with a fantastic idea. In order to have children one should first have to obtain a licence.

In the last 2 weeks I've seen some shocking things, I can't quite believe how some of the parents treat their children and I've just seen the tip of an exceedingly large iceberg. One young girl of about 10 was on the ward, she was covered in a strange, unidentifiable rash. Her hair was in an awful state, completely matted and literally swarming with nits it was desperate for a wash and comb. Unfortunately the back of her neck was the worst, the skin had peeled off and all that was left was a red raw patch of wet, sticky and inflamed gunk. It must have been so painful for her and nothing could be done to her hair, except cut it off because of the state of her neck. I felt so sorry for her, she was sweet, co-operative and very clever. Obviously the parents were nowhere to be seen on the ward. This girl had obviously had a problem for ages, yet only now had her parents even bothered to do anything - WHY? the poor thing winced in pain whenever anyone touched her, nobody could possibly have missed it, it was probably spotted at school before the parents even noticed! If parents don't want to look after their children properly then they shouldn't be allowed to have them!

Another girl, only a couple of months old was admitted with a cough, it wasn't a terribly bad cough, the consultant admitted her because her mother, an IV drug user, had just left her. The poor thing was coughing, the parents didn't give a fuck, the health visitor had taken the baby to doctors and he referred her for admission. These parents don't care about their children, it means they get a few more benefits to go and spend on drugs, they don't give a fuck about the welfare of the child. What sort of future does that poor little girl have? She'll probably go home, grow up with drug abusing mother and will probably turn out just the same. What a waste of a potential life.

My girlfriend who is currently teaching in a roughish comprehensive sees another side of these children, many of whom, at the age of 11 are writing in their schoolbooks that 'people how are 11 should smoke if they want', and god knows what else. These children aren't all stupid, the parents just fuck them up and don't help them at all.

I propose a simple solution whereby if you want to have a baby you must first apply for licence which would be granted if you meet certain criteria:
a) You're not a drug abuser
b) You've not a benefit cheating whore
c) You're over 18
d) You're a sensible person
e) You've got a job and will be able to cope financially with having a child (I suppose we could have a system where you can have 1 child if you're on benefits in the interests of fairness and all that)
f) You don't wear burberry/hoodies/other counterfeit designer clothing
g) You don't have an ASBO
h) You're not going to call your child after the last winner of celebrity big brother/your favourite brand of cider.
i) You're actually going to care for for your children
j) You're not going to sit your children in front of the TV all day and feed them turkey twizlers

Not only would this stop incompetent imbeciles from littering the country with children they don't care about it would save money on health care costs, save benefits and even reduce unemployment by proving jobs for people to assess potential parents. Seriously some people just aren't fit to be parents and it makes me sick to see the results of their neglect. I could never be a paediatrician for that reason alone.

Quite how we go about implementing such a system I'm not quite sure but that can be someone else's job, I'm just an ideas man.

If anyone else can suggest more criteria, please do. :)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Guess that means you're gonna be childless mofo :p

Dr Strangeblog said...

Interesting. I remember feeling exactly the same way when I did paeds. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad parents out there and equally, if not more, good ones. Paeds and especially Psych really made me feel priveleged to be where I am and the environment which I grew up in.

As much as it would be 'better' to be rid of 'undesireables', that would be tanatmount to eugenics and selective breeding, which I've only ever heard of in communist china and WW2 germany and neither of them are particularly good models.

We can't force a better society, only encourage it and work around the problems when we can't prevent them.

My tuppence.

The Little Medic said...

Thats a much more civilised view wanderer. And there are also the good parents out there, although during peads they seem to get drowned out by the stories of the bad ones.

Perhaps hospital isn't the safest place anyway - the roof fell in, onto one of the babies last week!!! Fortunately it was ok but it could have been a disaster.

Anonymous said...

An American new to the site. I was reading how 'the girl was in a terrible state' and thought how nice English people phrase things, whereas here we would just say she looked like shit, haha. But then you said 'parents don't give a fuck' and I was like, oh good, we're not so different.

Anyway, what is the abortion policy in the UK, or at least your feeling on it? Abortion is being threatened here and it scares me to think how many more abused kids we would see if it were illegal for all the people who realize how fucked up they are could not get an abortion.

Anonymous said...

Couldnt agree more, we were just discussing this very topic at our scottish medical school(which will remain anonymous too)very recently. We all came to the conclusion that most of the problems associated with poor upbringing in the uk fosters alcoholism, drug abuse and many other problems. These problems may not happen if such people had to apply to have a child, as the brain cells required to apply have been badly injured or missing since birth.

Public health legislation can certainly make a difference to society, however, is ms hewitt the best placed person to propose this?

Anonymous said...

this sounds just like 'brave new world' by huxley, give it a read if you havent already!