Professional Parents

If a smaller number of families raise children, however, why do the children have to be their own? Why not a system under which "professional parents" take on the childrearing function for others?

Raising children, after all, requires skills that are by no means universal. We don't let "just anyone" perform brain surgery or, for that matter, sell stocks and bonds. Even the lowest ranking civil servant is required to pass tests proving competence. Yet we allow virtually anyone, almost without regard for mental or moral qualification, to try his or her hand at raising young human beings, so long as these humans are biological offspring. Despite the increasing complexity of the task, parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.

[...]

There are far better ways to cope with the problems of youth, but professional parenthood is certain to be proposed, if only because it fits so perfectly with the society's overall push toward specialization. Moreover, there is a powerful, pent-up demand for this social innovation. Even now millions of parents, given the opportunity, would happily relinquish their parental responsibilities—and not necessarily through irresponsibility or lack of love. Harried, frenzied, up against the wall, they have come to see themselves as inadequate to the tasks. Given affluence and the existence of specially-equipped and licensed professional parents, many of today's biological parents would not only gladly surrender their children to them, but would look upon it as an act of love, rather than rejection.

Parental professionals would not be therapists, but actual family units assigned to, and well paid for, rearing children. Such families might be multi-generational by design, offering children in them an opportunity to observe and learn from a variety of adult models, as was the case in the old farm homestead. With the adults paid to be professional parents, they would be freed of the occupational necessity to relocate repeatedly. Such families would take in new children as old ones "graduate" so that age-segregation would be minimized.

Notes:

The idea that we should have people who work as parents because they are good at it, like we have with day-cares.

Folksonomies: parenting child care day-care

Taxonomies:
/family and parenting/children (0.693086)
/family and parenting (0.495104)
/family and parenting/adoption (0.402264)

Keywords:
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Concepts:
Parenting (0.927947): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Family (0.891719): dbpedia | freebase
Parent (0.889234): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Offspring (0.788018): dbpedia | freebase
Developmental psychology (0.744335): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Adult (0.713585): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
English-language films (0.653470): dbpedia
Mother (0.644425): dbpedia | freebase

 Future Shock
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Toffler, Alvin (1990), Future Shock, Random House LLC, Retrieved on 2013-12-19
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: social science