Should parents of "bad" children be sterilized?

A Charleston city councilman has called for sterilizing parents of bad children:

"What we've got is a failure in society, whether it's in Mount Pleasant with yuppie parents or whether it's on the East Side with poor crackhead parents," Shirley said Friday. "We pick up stray animals and spay them. These mothers need to be spayed if they can't take care of theirs. ... Once they have a child and it's running the streets, to let them continue to have children is totally unacceptable." Deadbeat dads might ought to be sterilized as well, he said.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

"Spayed", huh?

It's always fascinating to me how quickly the dehumanising language appears whenever someone advocates forced sterilisation (not unlike the last time it was all the rage in Europe, a few decades ago).

well I voted no, but I can certainly sympathise with where this is coming from. You can certainly look at some 'parents' at think that they should never have had kids. Just having the kids in some cases almost amounts to child abuse. However that doesn't make forced sterilisation the right action. I see some correlation between this and the death penalty, but I know not everyone would agree with me. From my point of view it isn't quite so much about human rights (all the victims have rights too) as about the fear that a mistake might be made and then it's too late. It's too grey an area to allow for such a final action.

it also often seems that those people who have the biggest problems with their families are the ones who have had the most kids - that's not saying that big families are the problem of course because it's still down to the lack of parenting, but I just cannot ever understand why people have kids if they aren't going to really look after them. Never mind 'spaying' - people like that want shooting!!

there are also too many different levels of what bad parenting looks like to make this anything other than highly subjective. Crackhead children are an extreme example, but would the definition also come to include parents who allow their kids to eat mostly junk food??

Kerri.

Mainly because it's such a hard topic. I mean, there really are times (I've seen it, it's sad) where a woman just does NOT care what happens to her children, and is not willing to take any form of birth conrtol, therefore her kids fill up the foster system, since she doesn't go through the process to put them up for adoption. I'd call the dad's liable too, but in these cases, sometimes even the mom doesn't know who that may be. Yet, on the flip side, I can also see the points made above of it being taken too far--but that could be a slippery slope argument, and I try to avoid those as I studied them in Pol. Sci in college and started to hate that all theories had a doomsday prediction attached.

Now, this comment below is for Kerri, and it may enlighten a few others, I dunno. BUT, this is about the comment on why people would want a lot of children that they can't look after themselves. I'm not sure exactly what you meant, so I'll take it that you meant too many to handle on your own--perhaps even that it's too many when you need the help of the older ones to raise the younger--this is my assumption, and I'll base my following statement on this assumption.

The reason some people have more children than they personally can take care of (so, I'm thinking more than 2-3, since after that, the siblings really do help out) is that they feel they should. Now, let me clarify. I've talked to women (and I feel I believe the same as of now) who believe that our lives begin BEFORE we are born onto the earth, and that if those of us who have the means, the ability, and the education to give these children a better environment than they would have if born into a--let's say 3rd world--country, then we ought to. We owe it to our brothers and sisters who will come to this earth anyway. Now, based on my religion, we also believe that children are really our spiritual siblings, and it's possible that they are older than us spiritually, but we just have the honor and blessing of being able to show them the earthly ropes. So to speak. It's been interesting to raise my children with this attitude, because I find myself trying to turn every moment into a teaching moment, rather than thinking "ha, I'm older than you, and it's because I said so". I'm sure it's purely a mindset and I know that there are somethings that a 3 year old's mind just doesn't grasp yet, but I've met some people who were amazed at what my children knew because they thought that they "couldn't learn so much at such a young age". Anyhow, I need to go finish cleaning before my inlaws show up. I'm excited for them to be here...6 days!! We haven't seen them in a few months, since we moved away to Indiana. It'll be nice to have family around for awhile.

Since I come from a culture that back in teh days of the Holocost we weer sterilized without cause I have to vote HECK NO.

Yours,

Lilah Lovara