I think this article highlights a main concern with the idea of parental licensing; particularly prejudices against certain groups of people who might seek to become parents. I also think that the flaws in the way we currently handle child custody in cases of mental disabled parents highlight similar flaws that would occur in any case where a system of parental licensing were to occur. There are new facts about mental illness that are being discovered even now and the outdated laws regarding custody in cases of mentally ill parents reflect prejudice and ignorance towards those who are mentally ill. This article states that,“the laws permitting termination of parental rights were mostly written in an era when serious mental illness was assumed to disqualify patients from participation in normal life, including parenting. Parents like Mindi may have been institutionalized. In many states, the mentally ill or intellectually disabled could be sterilized. The phrasing in the law has often changed—states have removed words like "feebleminded" and "depravity"—but the same concepts echo.” Again, these laws display an outdated and uninformed prejudice against those who suffer from mental disabilities. Again the article highlights this fact in saying, “the law does not explicitly cover disabilities, mental or physical. And in the absence of a clearly applicable federal standard, at least five states… have listed mental illness as one of a few "aggravating circumstances" that exempt authorities from having to provide help to attempt to piece families back together. Among the handful of other circumstances? Murdering, torturing or sexually abusing a child.” This exemplifies a lack of understanding of the facts of what mental illness actually entails and how it impacts the lives of individuals who suffer from it on a case-by-case basis. When evaluating whether someone is able to take care of their children, states would have to take into account more than just the results of some test of competency in the same way that Feldman relied on more than just test results in the evaluation of Rudy. The kind of evaluations we need are one’s like Rosenfeld that are done over a longer period of time and are based on the way the individual lives their life not the results of a series of IQ tests. Tests leave too much room for assumption and give too much power to the concept of “predictive neglect”. The article makes an excellent point that, " ‘There is a conceptual leap that the first assessor used’… he concluded that because Rudy scored ‘low on cognitive and personality disorder measures, therefore he can't parent…but that is a fallacy.’” This fallacy is a major objection I have to the idea of parenting licenses. I believe they would be an unreliable not just in measuring the capability of mental disabled parents but any parents. These tests might be able to accurately measure certain skills, but they would be measured in isolation from the impact that those skills have on parenting. I believe that the only way you can evaluate a parent is by actually allowing them to become a parent, or, at the very least, observing the way they live their day-to-day lives. There is no test that could give you that level of information.
I think this article highlights a main concern with the idea of parental licensing; particularly prejudices against certain groups of people who might seek to become parents. I also think that the flaws in the way we currently handle child custody in cases of mental disabled parents highlight similar flaws that would occur in any case where a system of parental licensing were to occur. There are new facts about mental illness that are being discovered even now and the outdated laws regarding custody in cases of mentally ill parents reflect prejudice and ignorance towards those who are mentally ill. This article states that,“the laws permitting termination of parental rights were mostly written in an era when serious mental illness was assumed to disqualify patients from participation in normal life, including parenting. Parents like Mindi may have been institutionalized. In many states, the mentally ill or intellectually disabled could be sterilized. The phrasing in the law has often changed—states have removed words like "feebleminded" and "depravity"—but the same concepts echo.”
ReplyDeleteAgain, these laws display an outdated and uninformed prejudice against those who suffer from mental disabilities. Again the article highlights this fact in saying, “the law does not explicitly cover disabilities, mental or physical. And in the absence of a clearly applicable federal standard, at least five states… have listed mental illness as one of a few "aggravating circumstances" that exempt authorities from having to provide help to attempt to piece families back together. Among the handful of other circumstances? Murdering, torturing or sexually abusing a child.” This exemplifies a lack of understanding of the facts of what mental illness actually entails and how it impacts the lives of individuals who suffer from it on a case-by-case basis.
When evaluating whether someone is able to take care of their children, states would have to take into account more than just the results of some test of competency in the same way that Feldman relied on more than just test results in the evaluation of Rudy. The kind of evaluations we need are one’s like Rosenfeld that are done over a longer period of time and are based on the way the individual lives their life not the results of a series of IQ tests. Tests leave too much room for assumption and give too much power to the concept of “predictive neglect”. The article makes an excellent point that, " ‘There is a conceptual leap that the first assessor used’… he concluded that because Rudy scored ‘low on cognitive and personality disorder measures, therefore he can't parent…but that is a fallacy.’” This fallacy is a major objection I have to the idea of parenting licenses. I believe they would be an unreliable not just in measuring the capability of mental disabled parents but any parents. These tests might be able to accurately measure certain skills, but they would be measured in isolation from the impact that those skills have on parenting. I believe that the only way you can evaluate a parent is by actually allowing them to become a parent, or, at the very least, observing the way they live their day-to-day lives. There is no test that could give you that level of information.