Why people should be certified to be parents?

           A very controversial topic now a day is whether or not people should be certified to become parents. It is not easy to be parent and raised a child. A lot goes into taking care of a child like time, money, and patience. Many people don’t have all of these attributes and struggle to take care of their children. So people should be certified to become parents because there are a lot of different situations that kids are left in and theses situations are not favorable to the kids.

            Since once someone hits puberty they are able to have children this can cause problems because sometime they might not be ready and might still be very young.  According to the Guttmacher Institute there is about “ Thirty-one of pregnancies are unwanted and another twenty percent are mistimed.” So basically over half of the pregnancy in the United States are mistimed or unintended leaving unborn children in horrible situations. The unborn child can be born into family that cannot support it or a family with an unstable situation, which can lead to a child being mistreated.

            Sometimes when a child is unwanted or not intended it can lead to abortions. It is the mother decision whether or not to keep the child, but this can be prevented by making sure people are certified to be parent and this will lead to a lot more wanted pregnancy. If people are certified there will be less abortions and the child will be given a chance to live a life. According to the American Life League the “Total number of abortions in the U.S. 1973-2011: 54.5 million+ and there are about 1.2 million abortions per year.”  Over the years we have lost many lives that did not even get to live because of parents not being ready or not wanting the child.

            Other option for children born into poor situation is they can be sent to foster care or put up for adoption. It was reported by the Foster Club “If nothing changes… by the year 2020 there will be 22,500 children will die of abuse or neglect, most before their fifth birthday.”  That is about 23 percent of the children in foster care today. Also according to AACAP “Approximately 1200,000 children are adopted each year in the United States.” Many of the children adopted come out of Foster care and mostly like have been abuse, which according to Huffpost the kids “are more likely to suffer reactive attachment disorder, which are essentially the inability not only to bond, but to feel. The effects are not just psychological, but also physical, with evidence these children can have elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, which increases their pain tolerance for pain.” Since some of these children have very high pain tolerance they can be beaten much more severely and that can lead to adopted parent getting out of control. In many cases adopted parents have killed their adopted child because it took a lot more for the child to react and the parent ends up killing the child. Erick Eckholm from the New York Times reported “ I have not been able to get four-year-old Sean Paddock, or 11-year-old Hanna Williams, or 7-year-old Lydia Schatz out of my mind.” Those were three different cases of children dieing from abuse by their adopted parents. There have been cases about parents that adopt that have killed, but there are cases of parents killing their children as well.

            Lastly, when parents with unwanted kids do not resort to any of the option mentions above they might end up doing the unthinkable and killing their child or children. According to USA Today News “three decades of FBI homicide data shows that on average, 450 children are killed every year by their parents.”  Unwanted kids or mistimed kids lead to a lot of unwanted results. Many kids have died and none of their deaths were their own fault. These parents that killed their children were probably under a lot of stress because the kid was not planned or they were just unfit to be a parent, but this can all change.

            Having people certified to become parents can prevent these problems and deaths. This can be done by when someone becomes the age of, which puberty starts doctors will put a contraceptive against pregnancy until they get a license to be a parent or get certified. Many lives will be saved and there will be many much happier families if this happens. Teens and young adults will be able to live their lives to the fullest without having a kid that may change the course of there lives. This will help a lot because people that want kids will have kids and people who do not will not.