Paying People To Be Good Parents

I don't think you actually disagreed with my first paragraph at all. I didn't say that we should NEVER remove a child from a home. I said that it introduces incredible trauma. You seem to agree with me on that point. There are certainly cases where this trauma is worth it in the end. I certainly agree with you on that point.

Carl M, I disagree with the first paragraph of your statement.

Welfare isn't all bad and the underprivileged deserve our help and with changes it can work.

But separating a child from the parent that won't lift a hand to help their own flesh and blood without payment is a righteous thing.

Removing kids from their family is damaging, but less so at an earlier age.

Instead of paying them to do the right thing, pay them to not have kids, that way you pay out to a lot less people.

@ Dustin ...

If only the world was so simple. Taking children from their parents introduces incredible trauma .. separating siblings introduces incredible anguish. Additionally, welfare HAS changed some in the past 15 years. It's no longer a permanent state of being for the poor. The government has slowly come to understand the cycle of dependency that welfare can create when implemented incorrectly. Clearly the payments we're discussing here ARE a form of welfare. The question is whether they have a net benefit (and whether there is a more economical way of achieving the same benefit).

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One measure of a society is obtained by seeing how it treats its least fortunate members. I do not (and cannot) defend the failed welfare system of old. But, if WE believe that society benefits by having a greater number of children receive a more complete set of medical care, then WE must find a way to make that happen.

If insurance companies (which should certainly have known better) didn't understand the benefit (not only to society but to their OWN BOTTOM LINE) of paying for preventive medical exams and procedures, then how can we expect everyone in society to understand the benefit? By the way, this doesn't apply ONLY to the poor. Requirements in school systems HELP to ensure that children are getting at least some SMALL amount of medical treatment by the time they enter school, but this doesn't help encourage families with very young children to seek the medical treatment they should. Nor does it encourage adults to get the preventive treatment THEY should get. What percentage of adults (who can afford it) visit doctors at the appropriate frequency for eye exams, physicals, BP tests, cholesterol tests, etc.? Imagine what it must be for those who CAN'T as easily afford it.

Here's a better idea. Since these families are mostly gonna be on welfare, why not just threaten to take the welfare (and the kids) away if they don't do these things. Save the state a bundle of cash and put the kids in what can only be a better environment.

The kids of today are the parents of tomorrow so even though housing all the kids belonging to bad parents would cost a fortune, it would be very preventative and profitable over the long run.

Two unrelated points concerning your writing:

1) Your indentation-for-emphasis is puzzling and is easily confused with a quote. Consider using a different technique such as italics (or nothing at all) instead.

2) Strike "utterly" from your vocabulary. This will make your sentences sound more crisp with the added benefit of you sounding less like a dweeb. ;)

As general rule, it is good practice to strip out unnecessary words from your sentences.

I agree with your assesment. This program suck, and it sucks more that it works. The fact that it works is reason enough to implement it. If it is as effective as it reports to be it should easily pay for itself by the fact that the kids will be less likely to wind up comitting crimes and are less likely to need special assistance programs in school.

Maybe I'm a foolish optimist, but I have a different take than TIMM (though with the same premise). Let's start with:

"Most children will grow into the model adults of they were familiar with in childhood. "

From there I reach a different conclusion. Here's the thing .. if there were no doctors in the world, parents wouldn't take their kids to doctors. Surely we don't believe that in the age before doctors, all parents were shirking their duties to take their kids to the doctor. The fact is that many of the services that SHOULD be used by ALL parents simply aren't available everywhere. If they weren't taken to a doctor regularly as a child, it may not even occur to a new parent that this is part of what they should do as a parent. It is obvious to take a badly ill child to a doctor, but preventive care is NOT an obvious requirement (it wasn't even obvious to insurance companies until the last 20 years or so that it would save them money in the long run to pay for some preventive care). Let's suppose that someone in the medical community was frustrated beyond belief that the message wasn't getting out there .. and that the needed facilities didn't even exist in poorer neighborhoods. How would they go about fixing this and CHANGING the expectations? This seems to be a pretty good way. If someone in the medical community had said "we need more preventive care in the inner city," the response might have been "there's no line of people looking for it .. why should we waste the resources?" If the parents in a community ask "Why the hell is this medical care available to others and not us?" then perhaps the response will be different.

Will there be abuses? Probably. Is it a long-term solution? No. But let's consider what this program could do to the culture .. to the expectations in a poor neighborhood. As TIMM said, "Most children will grow into the model adults of they were familiar with in childhood." If that model includes giving their children more complete medical care, then I would suggest that this is a GOOD thing. (The monetary incentives should be a short term thing used to raise awareness of what SHOULD be part of a complete package of medical care .. not a long-term bribe.)

Daniel, you highlighted (with bold type) the right phrases in your quoted material. I find it curious that you then ignored those phrases in your conclusion. Is it sad that this sort of thing is necessary? Sure. But who is to blame? Babies don't come with manuals. People learn how to raise children from those in their family and community. The fact that there are entire communities that have not gotten the message about what constitutes a complete package of medical care is the sad thing. Cultural inertia is a powerful thing. Overcoming inertia requires the application of a force. Though there may be many ways to accomplish the desired result, perhaps this will accomplish it most quickly (and perhaps even most inexpensively). As the insurance companies learned when they (finally) started to routinely pay for an array of preventive care, sometimes spending a LITTLE money now will save a LOT of money later.

Most children will grow into the model adults of they were familiar with in childhood. some won't, but most will. So, given this type of program, I do not find it hard to believe that these children will expect to be given money for having kids, much less raising them.

In fact, given the fact that they will be more expert at the resources of their environment than we can expect of them, I predict that they will find a way to be in the advantageous position to demand it.

"Fuck it, he can starve until I get my parenting check."

The whole idea is that we are going to trust these "unfortunate" people to finally see the light and do what is right, on the basis that monetary incentive will reward them at every important turn.

How's about, these people should go to prison for not having their kids in healthy, running order? Why not keep the school systems accountable for their own inadequacies?

This isn't right. Do I have a better answer? Maybe not. Nothing more than this is going to do more harm than good, and it's giving more power to irresponsible parents than they have a right to or a need for. Who does this put at risk? The providers of the program, the public in general, or the kids?

Dammit, I see a load of kids and their needs being held hostage for the promise of money they can raise. It's a bad precedent to make.

-=T=-

Welfare by another name. The difference here is that it allows for a market response rather than a government response. It's more successful to let people choose their own doctor and pay for it themselves than it is to use the same money (and probably more) to build a clinic because the doctors have to compete and the clinic doesn't. Competition again shows itself to be valuable. Don't get too distracted by the notion that the parents should be "taking care of their kids" anyway, that's not the main point. The same argument can be said of any kind of assistance, public or private. The "for the sake of the kids" part is just to make less people complain that New York is trying to change its public assistance program to one that allows market competition.