I don’t mean to be rude and all, but some people are morons. A lot of people, actually. And they breed like crazy.

I also don’t mean to imply that parenthood is by any means an indicator of intelligence or lack thereof. Perfectly smart people have gone on to have wonderful children. In fact, I’d be willing to put money on the fact that the best and brightest of our world – Einstein, Michaelangelo, Super Dave – were all somebody’s child. It’s just that the people who are least equipped to be good role models are often the ones who supply more than their fair share of the next generation; common sense and fertility are unfortunately not positively correlated. Working in retail, I see you in action, Baby Machine: four screaming ankle-biters and a belly full of new fetus, you somehow are still ill-prepared to handle your spawn. A two-year-old should not be hanging around our fish pond unsupervised, sharing a bottle of Coke with your three-year-old is probably a bad call too, and taking small things out of your child’s mouth while you’re on your cell phone should not be the job of a sales clerk.

I am still a baby myself, and yet I feel like I would do a better job than many of the parents I encounter. The human race has been reproducing for a long time, and it might be assumed that anyone capable of making a baby is going to instinctually be able to raise that thing when it flees the womb, but, unfortunately, this is not the case. Why is it that you need to take test for driving cars, but there is no licensing department to confirm that you’re going to be able to raise a child without fucking it up too badly? This seems incredibly strange to me. Creating a human being seems like kind of a big responsibility. Shouldn’t there be some way of making sure any moms and dads out there are going to be able to handle it?

If we were to discuss some sort of hypothetical “breeding license” (which I am), this might irk some of you freedom lovers out there. After all, should anyone but you have the right to control your reproduction? This sort of question, in one form or another, has been an issue of contention for approximately… a long time. Government involvement in abortion policies and China’s ongoing one-child policy are two examples. To this I say, think of the children. Should 16 year olds be taking care of their accidental babies if they can’t prove they can make something other than Red Bull for dinner? Take any problem anybody has: it’s been shown over and over and over again that it stems from childhood. If your parent tells you you‘re stupid and fat all the time, you grow up with low self esteem. Violence stems from abusive homes. If we want a society with happy, productive, citizens, let’s start from the bottom. What’s so wrong about stepping in early, about ensuring parents-to-be will be good parents, or at least handing out Super Condoms to those who don’t make the grade?

Whether you’ve got the genes of a genius or not, though, there are too many people in this world already. We’re ruining the Earth because we just keep making babies, and then those babies grow up to be gas-guzzling litterbug glacier-melters, just like the rest of us. According to the US Census Bureau, at the rate the world’s population is growing, there will be about nine billion human beings on this planet by the year 2040. The responsible thing to do for our species (and the planet) is for you and your partner to try and reduce this number by making a decision to have a smaller family. If every couple had just two kids, the population would stay about the same year after year. Have just one, and it’ll reduce. Math will save the world. It’s just too bad those who most need to prune their future family tree might not be able to crunch those numbers.

//Stacey Mclachlan

Writer

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