As children, we were taught by our parents to always ask for permission before doing anything or going anywhere. As students, we were subjected to countless tests and exams before earning our promotion to the next academic level or entry to an educational institution of choice. As adults, we’re still not spared the slew of official assessments – before getting a licence to drive, for instance.
But there is one thing that needs no prerequisite or permission – becoming parents. As long as you are legally married, you are encouraged to procreate – by parents and relatives whose incessant nagging doesn’t stop until the first birth; and by our Government desperate to reverse the declining Total Fertility Rate. There is no need to meet any requirement or sit for any test before we can start a family. But is this actually a boon or bane?
While we cannot guarantee how our children will turn out when they grow up, we do what we can to the best of our abilities, nurturing them properly and inculcating them with the correct values. Without going into lofty morals, let me start with small, everyday acts. I have personally witnessed parents standing by and watching their kids urinate along a walkway or by a park bench, allowing their domestic helpers to wait on the little princes and princesses hand and foot, and letting tantrums go unchecked.
In the world of wheels, I see kids running amok around the estate on their bicycles, rollerblades and skate scooters, and parents not enforcing the use of child seats and seatbelts when travelling in cars. Such poor parenting will simply perpetuate another generation of “repeat offenders”.
In the Margaret Peterson Haddix novel Turnabout, about a group of senior citizens who become part of a scientific experiment where they grow younger instead of older (similar to the movie The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button), there is a rigorous Parent Test that every couple must pass before they are allowed to discontinue birth control. This concept sounds ludicrous, until I saw the way some parents here fail to teach their children well.
So, I am all for the Parent Test. I don’t know if my husband and I will pass with flying colours, but we’ll gladly submit to it if this can help ensure a next generation that is well brought up, gracious, civilised and generally better people. My only reservation is, if the Parent Test ends up like our local driving test, it would be far from foolproof – we still encounter utterly incompetent drivers, even though motorists on the road have passed the test and hold a valid Class 3 licence.
