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The marriage we're talking about is a legal entity, not a religious one. You could still be church married if you wanted to be! But if you want the legal rights and responsibilities you should know what those are.

This has nothing to do with religion or belief systems. It has to do with understanding the many, many laws that apply to marriage (tax benefits, inheritance, division of property etc) and can be taught by someone certified in that field. Just like they certify real estate agents and tax preparation individuals.

I also think in ADDITION to this that someone who wants to get married "in a religion" should attend a class held by that church that educates you on what your RELIGION expects out of you. Many churches do offer those classes - some churches mandate them. That is a separate issue but if you are religious then I think it is equally as important. Obviously if you are NOT religious and just get married by the town clerk this would not apply to you.

I'm not sure if you are joking or not, but about 10 years ago when I worked at a biotech company a woman there was very strongly in favor of this. She had a child and had met so many young parents who were completely harming their infants' health that it sickened her. At the time I was quite the liberal and was all against the idea. I thought any person should be able to have as many kids as they wanted to.

Now I'm 10 years older and I have to say, many people do REALLY stupid things to their infants and many of these things result in death. I am actually now in favor of doing something that is pretty much guaranteed to be reversible to youngsters. I'm pretty sure that both the male and female "snipping" operation is rather commonplace now. We'd completely remove the risk of unwanted / teen pregnancy which would save MILLIONS of lives - both of the kids that would be raised poorly and of the parents who would be unhappy in those situations.

If a person WANTED to have a kid, they'd just have to take a state-run course on what is involved in raising a child - medical safety, nutrition, finances, etc. It'd be like a car course - they would have them everywhere and it would be able to be scheduled for you. Then you take a test. You pass it, you get the tubes reconnected. You fail, you take the course again.

Considering the billions of dollars we spend on the foster care system, on medicare for damaged kids and on welfare for the not-ready parents, this would save taxpayers HUGE amounts of money and would also save countless millions of individuals (kid and adult) from a really unhappy situation.

To Lisa:

I did ask whose culture/beliefs/values were to be followed IF the lessons were more than legal lessons.

I can see the benefits of making couples aware of legalities. I believe it would be like opening a can of worms to suggest values that truly help keep a marriage together can be taught on a generic basis.

To Lisa on The Mandated Snippety-Snip:

Yeowch Lisa!! Mothers all over the world are up in arms over circumcision because they view it as an unnecessary, risky, painful procedure. Can you imagine the uproar if someone suggested temporary sterilisation of all??

No...I am NOT handing the government that power.

Also, the experts can not settle on one standard for health, safety, ect now...how are they supposed to determine what should actually be enforced?

Right, I think I agree with you there. Like I said, the government should teach the government's side - i.e. all the legalities. A lot of new wives and husbands have NO idea what they have gotten into in that area.

On the religious / beliefs side, obviously that would be different from religion to religion and the group most qualified to teach a couple what is expected of them would be that very religion. If you were marrying Jewish, it should be your Jewish elders that show you what is appropriate there. Islamic people would need to be taught by their Islamic elders.

I know when I got married back in '87 we married Protestant (at my then-husband's childhood church) and we had to go to several talks beforehand to understand what that church expected out of a couple. I know many Catholic couples who had to go on weekend retreats and go through a course before they married. So I think many churches already offer these seminars. I really think if you are getting married in a belief system that you should have a very good idea (i.e. go through training) to be fully aware of what is expected of you. Something like that should never be a "surprise" after the fact.

But actually I *do* think that there are generic ideas about how relationships work that are valuable to anyone, and think that local community groups could easily offer courses in that. Many local community colleges I know offer courses like "family dynamics" and such. People get practice in dealing with siblings and parents, but they don't get ANY practice really in "dealing with a man who you have sworn to stick with through life" until they are in that position. There are so many coping mechanisms, communication techniques, anger management, etc. that could help them get through the initial shock.

Hmmm, good points. First, I'm against circumcision because that is something that removes pleasure and was intended to keep a guy from cheating (and girls too in the areas that that is done). It really doesn't help cleanliness much at all and the pleasure reduction is very noticeable. So I really don't think the two are related. Circumcision provides little to no benefit and causes loss of pleasure. Birth Control would prevent millions of abortions and children being abused and abandoned.

That's a very real problem our world faces. It would literally save us billions of dollars a year in the associated costs of foster care, abortion services, and even jail care. Studies show that some phenomonal percentage of inmates were unwanted children. If all that money could be used for education, think of what an amazing educational system we could have.

I'm suggesting a very simple test, just like we have a driving test. All they have to learn is the basics - how often a baby tends to sleep, what he eats, how quickly he learns to do different things. It could even just cover the first 6 months. I really feel this is critical for new parents to have.

I know many nurses who say that women come in to labor without any idea of what is going on, screaming their heads off because they are terrified of what is happening. Then a few hours later they are handed an infant and told "take care of it" and they leave completely clueless. The nurses get very upset sometimes, seeing that helpless baby going off with someone who hasn't the first idea of how to take care of a baby. And the news reports daily of children who die of malnutrition, of poor care and abuse as a result.

If new parents had just a simple test to show they understood the basics, those babies would have a fair chance to at least live those first 6 months without dying a painful death. And if parents had to take that test before being able to conceive, we wouldn't have awful situations like the 11 year old girl in the Ukraine who just gave birth because her neighbor had sexually molested her.

Lisa, for the record, I was serious, and what I meant was something like what you wrote here:
But, yeah. It's just an utopia. It would probably be very unpopular, and it would have to be absolutely 100% reversible.

To Lisa:

My point about relating sterilisation to circumcision was that mothers are not rushing in droves to have procedures that are risky and painful done to their children.

The tubal ligation is a risky and a VERY painful procedure. I do recall when I signed the papers that I was aware that a number of things including death could occur. And it's not completely reversible for everyone.

I don't see parents going for this one.

I know why you feel parents should be educated on parenting. I can think of quite a few who I personally feel should never have had children but yet there they are parenting. It concerns me but I still do not want a government having such invasive power over my life.

OK, what if we did it differently. We already put flouride into the water. What if we just put birth control into the water so that the natural state of people would be to not have kids. And then if a mother decided she did want kids all she'd have to do was drink bottled water instead. But again it would help teenagers not get pregnant unwantedly, and poor innocent rape / molestation victims not get pregnant forceably. This would again cut down on the huge number of abortions we have yearly as well as the number of abused / abandoned kids who were unwanted.

We could (and should) offer free baby training to any pregnant mother and her partner that at least covers those first 6 months. We would save the money back by the huge reduction in medical costs from all the children who are not therefore hospitalized due to bad parenting. Uneducated parents do some really insane things to their kids because they have no idea what they're doing. Look at the huge caseloads the DSS has, to try to "save" kids after they've already been abused. And look at how full of kids our foster care system has - I believe it's in the millions. If we could help prevent those situations from happening in the first place we could easily save millions of dollars, which could fund the parent-training program AND go into education.

I really think pregnancy should be something a parent CHOOSES to have happen, and not something that can automatically happens unless the sex-haver BLOCKS it. A child is far too precious a life, it deserves to be wanted and cared for and loved. If anything, I would blame the parents of the teens for not properly educating them about sex. Then the teens go have sex unprotected, and now the baby child is the one who suffers.

Also:
- because they just don't care enough;
- because they are too busy to take care of their kids.