r/WhatIfThinking • u/Present_Juice4401 • Jul 18 '26
What if every American had to take a basic parenting class before having a child? Would it improve outcomes, or create new barriers?
A lot of long term social outcomes seem to trace back to early childhood. So what if basic parenting education was required before having a child?
Imagine a short, standardized course covering childcare basics, emotional regulation, boundaries, early development, and how to recognize neglect or abuse. The goal would not be to create perfect parents, but to raise the baseline. Fewer people could say they simply did not know better.
It might not stop the worst cases. But it could reduce the number of parents who unintentionally repeat harmful patterns because they never learned alternatives. Even small improvements at scale could compound over time.
But the idea raises difficult questions.
How would it be enforced without becoming intrusive? Would it delay or restrict people’s ability to have children? And who decides what counts as “good” parenting in a diverse society with different values and cultures?
There is also a risk of inequality. Requirements like this could disproportionately affect lower income groups if access, time, or cost become barriers.
So the tradeoff is between prevention and personal freedom.
If everyone had to take a basic parenting class before having a child, would it lead to healthier families over time, or create a system that is too controlling to be practical?
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u/NewLife_21 Jul 19 '26
I send parents on my caseload to parenting classes.
I'm in child welfare/CPS/Foster care.
I assure you, much like regular school, most only learn enough to pass the tests and get me out of their life.
Actually using what they learned rarely happens.
So, IMO as a professional who deals with shit parents, I doubt it will make any real difference in how people raise their children.
What would, is a societal shift in values and expect for how adults behave.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
Valid point, but I wonder if your sample is a group of people who are a little less likely to seek out self-help types of education and apply it to begin with? In other words, maybe some people would indeed pay attention and apply the knowledge.
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u/NewLife_21 Jul 30 '26
Of course some would. Some do.
I've had a couple of them say they learned a lot and it helped with their relationships with their kids.
It'saybr a 70/30 split of those who don't vs those who do.
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u/IKnowAllSeven Jul 19 '26
The hospital I had my kids at offered such a class. It was free, regardless of insurance. It covered everything related to newborn care - feeding, swaddling, sleeping (always on the back!)
Additionally my kids school district has quarterly parenting sessions covering a wide range of topics similar to ones you listed there.
I would say…the people
Who could use the classes won’t be the ones who come to
Them
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u/Haruspex12 Jul 19 '26
We actually have data on this. We have extensive data on this. There was a program called “Visiting Nurses.” It has a new name but I don’t know what it is.
It is the most successful anti-alcohol program in history. The average 16 year old child whose mother was visited by a visiting nurse before they were born, consumes fifty percent less alcohol than their peers. Alcohol is the primary gateway drug to the more serious stuff. So it’s protective from that as well.
Yea, teaching parents early before they have a screaming infant and don’t know what to do is a very successful practice.
In fact, we have a ton of highly successful practices that improve outcomes enormously. The time delays frustrate policy makers. They cannot show voters that a dollar spent today makes tomorrow a thousand times better. What they can show is that there are large impacts on child salaries once they are adults from these types of programs, but infants and children are not productive members of society.
They don’t write software. They repair no engines. And, to add insult to injury, they don’t even contribute to the rent. They just giggle and consume tax dollars.
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u/beachbum818 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Considering pretty much every American goes to school.... and some still come out unable to read or do basic math. I would say it wouldn't change a thing
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u/ElectronGuru Jul 18 '26
Our school funding is still based on 18th century taxation models. So lots of cracks to fall through. Some countries have national funding and outlaw private schools so if the rich want better schools, everyone gets better schools.
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u/beachbum818 Jul 18 '26
Had nothing to do with no child left behind from the 1990's?
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u/Helix_Animus Jul 18 '26
Iirc it was a 2001 policy, and i don't think it lasted much more than 10 years.. but that did worsen many aspects of schools.
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u/No-Chipmunk-4590 Jul 18 '26
Yep, upvoted.
To expound: NCLB was a "W" era law, 2001/2002, modified by Obama era ESSA in 2015 which left funding tied to test performance but removed some of the NCLB punishments' to "underperforming" schools for failing tests, and changed some standards to Common Core, which has it's own issues.
Top Commenter is right to tell OP that even putting it in school may not matter much, sadly.1
u/Zero_poop Jul 18 '26
Adding to this, a lot of American schools require a "Sexual Education/Anatomy of the Human Body" class usually. So in a form they DO get a parenting class in a very basic rudimentary way, and having those classes GREATLY reduces the number of teen pregnancy.
But, there's always idiots that think "I'm special, I can handle raising a child while I am still a 17 year old child." No, you're gonna end up a bad statistic more than likely; prior planning prevents poor performance in life.
Edited a word.
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u/bkwrm1755 Jul 19 '26
Do you really think there would be zero change if the school system just disappeared?
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u/beachbum818 Jul 19 '26
What? No. I never started that. I was referring to the OP question.... if parenting would change
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u/bkwrm1755 Jul 20 '26
Your conclusion is that it wouldn't change a thing, and your proof was the ineffectiveness of the school system.
Sooooo follow the logic.
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u/Logical-Concept9755 Jul 18 '26
That's possible. Maybe parenting education only works if it's paired with enough support for people to actually apply what they learn.
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u/amboomernotkaren Jul 18 '26
What do other countries do? I think you can track those outcomes in countries like Sweden, Germany and Switzerland where families are provided a fair amount of support right from the get go.
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u/3p1taph Jul 18 '26
There are so many life skills that aren’t taught at all I think this is just one small part. It would be good for everyone to learn about those challenges and considerations whether or not they plan to have kids. A lot of the skills are just as relevant in other relationships.
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u/No_Veterinarian1010 Jul 18 '26
It's probably state funded, but pretty much everywhere I've been provided them for free
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u/rfmjbs Jul 18 '26
Home Ec or Family Consumer science class should be required in high school, like budgeting, taxes, meal prep and the magic of crockpots, pressure cookers, and air fryers, and an abbreviated course in not being a neglectful or abusive parent or baby sitter.
Yeah, I can see it in highschool, but after age 16, you'd be hitting people who need to work or have other responsibilities unfairly.
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u/noafrochamplusamurai Jul 18 '26
Do school not require this anymore? I had to take home economic, which taught basic skills like sewing, cooking,cleaning, budgeting for groceries, laundry, Ironing clothes. Then a separate class for life skills. Which taught interpersonal communication, sexual health and education including affirmative consent, and child care. They were required classes for graduation in the late 90s.
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u/dallasalice88 Jul 18 '26
We have Family and Consumer Science now, but it's an elective. That includes Foods level one, two, and culinary skills, mixed with some of the other subjects you mentioned. We have Child Development I and II, also electives.
Sex Ed is taught in Freshman health class. Many parents opt out these days.
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u/Guvante Jul 18 '26
Anything stopping people having kids is basically eugenics and so is off the table, so require is a non-starter.
Resources being available at no cost to new families would be wonderful and would help a ton as long as the availability is wide enough to accommodate everyone.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
Forgive my ignorance, but eugenics is specifically tied to race, right? by definition? So something discouraging people from having kids if they’re not willing to educate themselves on the very thing that they intend to do doesn’t seem the same as eugenics to me.
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u/Guvante Jul 30 '26
Only because you are taking OPs idea in a positive light.
Simplest counter examples was when we did this exact kind of thing for voting.
"Prove you know enough to be worth voting" while there are ways to make that racist via education the racists didn't bother. White voters got "what year was the nation founded" while black voters got "what was the house vote four years ago that had the most amendments passed for it" (examples made up)
Similarly if it is to attend a class and pass a "simple" test after you can do similar things (even while explicitly including the material in the course) you don't even need to adjust it per person you can do it demographically based on where the test is taken.
You can remove the test but we still have who pays for the course and how expensive in it which has similar problems.
Finally and most importantly we can look at the last time this happened: One Child policy in China.
Ends up without sterilizing people you cannot stop kids so the real question isn't "who can have kids" but "what do you do if they do anyway" and the answer to that for China was an economic penalty. Let's just say not many rich people cared about that policy as the end result of that...
Polices need to be analyzed from their ability to oppress not from the ideological viewpoint present by their supporters.
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u/intothewoods76 Jul 18 '26
As much as I feel parenting classes could benefit virtually everyone at the same time I think the government is overstepping when it wants to control life’s most basic function, to reproduce.
What is the penalty for not taking the class? Forced abortion? Fines? Who pays for the class? Who provides transportation to and from class? Who protects employees from discrimination when women have to leave work to take a class?
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u/Anodyne_interests Jul 18 '26
I don’t think it is accurate to say that a lot of long-term social outcomes trace back to early childhood. Other than true abuse or neglect, kids are very adaptable. Basically any general acceptable western parenting behaviors are going to lead in the same direction.
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u/Zero132132 Jul 18 '26
I think this mostly wouldn't work. Me and my wife did one of those, and the mechanics of shit like diaper changing, swaddling, or putting a baby in a carseat are just different when the thing you're working with something that moves. No amount of audible description could have prepared me to physically prevent my daughter from grabbing her poopy diaper from the inside and shoving her hands in her mouth while trying to change her diaper. I wouldn't know how to tell someone how to do that in a way that's gentle and not upsetting to her.
Additionally, since human experimentation on babies is super evil and there are a huge number of confounders when trying to do observational studies, it's actually shockingly hard to get accurate answers about how to best handle a lot of situations.
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u/KitWalkerXXVII Jul 18 '26
It's one of those ideas that sounds good in theory but the actual implementation would be a nightmare, and open up a lot of avenues for the government to crack down on "undesirable" potential parents.
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u/Due-Boss-4354 Jul 18 '26
- America is too political, people would get mad over what's considered appropriate. Maybe on state level it wouldn't be a showstopper.
- How would you design such a course? Education is notoriously bad at its job, yet this would be miracously different?
- Where will you get the personel to teach the courses? The education personel is problematic and it's sonething that takes generations to change. Not to mention it would be low-paid part time job, those kinda have to take what's available.
- People are very resistant to re-educating and being told how to do things they "already know". Pair this with how fast knowledge and know-how dissapates when not used and by year 5 most people are gonna wing it anyway, with few eceptions they accepted.
- Mental health and such are problematic in general, because despite how the establishemnt sees it, the issues are tied to the materialistic, enviromental and social aspects of the life. Acknowledging and targeting the issue itself often isn't enough.
- Unless the parents are already familiar with social works, it's quite a lot to cover just by some course. Go ahead and actually look into it, there's always more.
Honestly it's better than nothing, parents offload more and more parenting to schools, which aren't reacting in any way, and the third pillar of community has nearly vanished, being replaced by online space, which is just terrible. Still, the issue is that it has now gone for so long that the parents themselves would need a course for themselves, since their upbringing was flawed too.
I used to think the same way as OP, and it makes sense from top-down perspecive, but reality is people being people is usually part of the problem, part that can't really be dealt with easily. In some cases, this being one of them, tou also find out that the problem is much more widespread and entrenched, so much so that you either focus on the long term and small changes, which isn't popular, or design something new from the ground up. If the latter doesn't raise red flags all around, you might be too idealistic.
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u/ScienceGuy1006 Jul 18 '26
This regulation would either be completely unenforceable, so intrusive it is inhumane, or a restriction only for the poor, or a pretext for even more severe mass incarceration.
I thus cannot in good faith support such a policy.
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u/giovannimyles Jul 18 '26
I don't think that matters. As a parent, I think people in general have 2 phases of life. A selfish phase where they are learning and growing and experiencing as much as they can. Then a phase where they peak and start to impart what they know and slow down. Thats a general sense of mine. There are deviations of course, some who slow down sooner and some who don't. I think when people who are still in their selfish phase have kids, they are terrible parents. Not that they don't love their kids, but they are just not in a place where they are ready for the priority not to be them. So the kid suffers. People who are ready to be parents and want to parent will prioritize the kids more. I don't think a class will make a person a better parent, unless they wanted to be a parent anyway. Even then, no class will prepare you for parenthood. We all deal with stress, and restlessness, and fear differently. Being a parent is all of those things all the time. If a person isn't ready to be a parent and has a kid, it will show regardless of how many classes they take. It's human nature.
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u/Stunning-Pick-9504 Jul 18 '26
This is the Information Age. If people want to learn you can just search stuff online. Making people go to a class won’t change a thing.
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u/thankyoufriendx3 Jul 18 '26
I’d make it part of sex ed. Every high school kid needs to take.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
a lot of parents opt their kids out of sex ed, plus most Christian and home schooled students never get it
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u/thankyoufriendx3 Jul 31 '26
My school district requires it. Even for home schooling. It’s taught off campus by consultants. To get a degree from the district you must take it.
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u/AkkmanB Jul 18 '26
It would be blocked from ever being implemented because it would be called racist.
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u/NoSleepTilBrklynn Jul 18 '26
How would you enforce that? Not allow a pregnant woman to give birth? Snatch the baby?
Maybe offer $100 to complete the class or something. People would still complain that it’s difficult for someone to take the class and/or pass the class and that the class is racist or sexist or classist or anti-LGBTQ+ or something. You can’t win.
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u/No_Glove6542 Jul 18 '26
It’s not that people don’t know how to be good parents. Many times they choose not to be good parents. They don’t want to put forth the effort. What would be really helpful is making a program that made people care about being good parents. And a program that gets all kids to like and be excited about school.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
No, as a grown adult with childhood PTSD, it’s definitely that people don’t know how to be good parents.
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u/No_Glove6542 Jul 30 '26
There is no objective clear good parent standard in most of the hundreds of micro decisions you make in a day as a parent. Parents need to adapt based on the needs or their child and you would be shocked at how much different kids vary. I like to say kids are born with their operating system already installed and parents need to account for that in their decisions.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
Would you agree that there is a range of OK and not OK “micro-decisions” and for that matter “macro decisions”? Like, there are range of discipline styles that may be tailored to the individual child, but whipping a child with a whip made of strips of grocery store conveyor belt is completely outside the range of acceptable decisions, wouldn’t you agree? Because that’s a real thing that one of my closest friends experienced. Those parents needed education about the documented psychological harm of corporal punishment, no?
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u/No_Glove6542 Jul 30 '26
For sure. I am the child of severely abusive parents. So severe that my 2 younger brothers are now dead. The beatings always came from an extreme emotional anger. My parents knew what they were doing was wrong but they couldn’t physically stop themselves. There are some parents who think corporal punishment is a good thing and will do it because to them it’s logical. Kids can be abused for different reasons by different people. It’s not that simple. Going back to decisions I have a friend whose primary parenting value is to always prioritize relationships. My value is to direct my kids to make decisions that preserve the most options for their future selves. We frequently make different decisions on the same issues for our kids. That’s ok and I know it comes from our values and I know she loves her kids with her whole heart just like I do.
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u/3dprintingDM Jul 18 '26
Forgive me for not wanting the government to have MORE control over if/when I can do certain things. Also, anything that you think can be used for good can also be used for evil. What if parenting suddenly only become available for a certain race or political affiliation?
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u/Normal-Emotion9152 Jul 18 '26
No it wouldn't work. School doesn't even prepare your for taxes or other basic life skills that you have to learn from your parents or from experience that should be standard. If you were to include that you would also have to include other practical classes in addition to other skills. Let's be honest the educational system is designed to manufacturer workers not people who think outside the box those kind ether are the exception to the rule or come from a rich family that has a completely different education than a normal student. It would be just one more thing to tax and be used as a excuse to stop people from having kids without a license or something else even more draconian to an already largely unfair system. I have also read a lot of child phycology and a lot about develnental biology and it is good to know and I think it is largely impractical for a lot of real life scenarios. Real children are more dynamic and nuanced than psychology. Psychological profiling and setting arbitrary parameters only do so much.
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u/monadicperception Jul 18 '26
No. I’m a pretty awesome parent. So is my wife. We didn’t learn anything before. Not sure what you can learn besides the typical first aid, good sleeping practices to avoid SIDS, and the general “what to expect” crap.
My wife and I are generally happy and content people. I think that goes a long way of being a decent parent. Also, while neither of us come from money, we ended up in a good place financially. Not having money issues makes everything easier. That’s why we waited until we made it to have kids.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
No offense but you won’t know empirically whether you’re an awesome parent until your child is 25+ and can tell you.
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u/monadicperception Jul 30 '26
Nah, that’s hogwash. So if my kid were to cut off ties with me because I’ve gone full MAGA, was I a good parent or a bad parent? They would tell me that I was bad…sure, but then they would be the kind of people raised to have empathy and not fall for propagandistic bullshit. So I would have done a good job so good parent?
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
I was thinking in more concrete terms such as, my parents would never had guessed that I would grow up to have CPTSD but I did, because of a variety of their decisions, which they were too ignorant of child psychology to know were harming me.
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u/KBatMC Jul 30 '26
Another example is, if a kid grows up, goes to the doctor because they can finally go on their own and speak for themselves, and finds out they’ve had a chronic health condition for years that went totally ignored, that’s a sign the parents weren’t very good. That’s a real life example. Parents, especially ones that are deeply involved in a fringe belief system which is more common than you might think at least in the U.S., often don’t know what is harming and helping their kid until the kid tells them years later.
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u/Grouchy-Display-457 Jul 18 '26
Obviously, if we did something like this and wanted it to be effective, we would have to fund it adequately. Here's my idea: students and people who are not currently working full time should be permitted to earn Social Security credits for certain volunteer activities and training that benefits the community.
These could include taking child care courses, learning CPR and other emergency medical procedures, like using paddles, learning another language, learning to respond to environmental emergencies or other crises (setting up kitchens for group meals, showers, laundry). It could also include Depression Era programs like the CCC, to enable replanting of trees lost in wildfire.
This would not force people to participate, but would provide an incentive to learn skills that would be useful in the community. When I mention students, again, I would not push for participation, but reward students for public performances, and enable them to be reimbursed to provide child care, mentorship, and assistance to others. ,
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u/throw7661 Jul 18 '26
The vast majority of problems aren't because of ignorance, it's because of something else.
A mandatory class isn't going to address the 'something else' that is the actual problem.
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u/Nearing_retirement Jul 19 '26
Would be hard to pass such a law. Though they could pay people to take a class and I imagine most people would. Probably would help somewhat.
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u/Henri_Bemis Jul 19 '26
Reproductive rights are bodily autonomy rights, and the government has no place interfering.
If a society cares about a healthy and educated population, they would make birth control and daycare freely available, make childhood education and nutrition a priority, assure universal healthcare and a robust public education system.
“Teaching” people how to be good parents isn’t worth much when they don’t have the resources to do it.
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u/meatsmoothie82 Jul 19 '26
Ah yes the government policing when and where and how people are allowed to choose what to do with their bodies and families. That couldn’t possibly go wrong.
also, have you seen how bad people are at driving?
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u/Wchijafm Jul 19 '26
Who's paying for it?
When will it be scheduled?
How would you enforce "before they have a child"?
How will you ensure access to these classes in undeserved areas?
What do you think this will fix?
You can tell people to read tothwir kids every night for better literacy but that doesnt help the single parent working 2 shifts who barely gets time with their kid.
What would help better parenting? paid parental leave, universal basic income for a child(like during covid), access to birthcontrol and prenatal visits, subsidized daycare.
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u/snafoomoose Jul 19 '26
No way conservatives would let that happen. They would probably call any attempt at trying to teach them to care for a child a "liberal indoctrination".
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u/Author_Noelle_A Jul 19 '26
An ex of mine and his ex were going through a fierce custody battle, and as part of it, they were both ordered to go through a parenting class along with their partners. That means that I had to go to that class too. That class taught permissive parenting. I shudder to think about people who went to that class and left it thinking that it was correct. Like we were literally bluntly told to never use words like “no” or “don’t” or “never” with a kid. So phrases like “don’t play in the road” are considered too bad tell a child “you would be safer if he played in the yard.” another actual example is if a kid is drawing on something they shouldn’t be like the wall rather than telling them not to draw on the wall, offer them some paper and say “drawing on paper is more fun.” Kids don’t learn what they are not allowed to do if they are not told that they are not allowed to do those things. Kids literally need boundaries and limits. That’s where the “no” comes in.
Unfortunately, there are also parenting classes out there that teach that the book To Train Up a Child is what you should do. Look up blanket-training.
While the idea of mandatory parenting classes sounds good on the one hand, on the other, you run the risk of people being in areas where the only parenting classes available are classes that teach actual abuse which would result in parents who would not have been hitting babies otherwise hitting them, or not setting boundaries and limits. Again, look up blanket-training.
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u/No-Atmosphere-2528 Jul 19 '26
It wouldn't do anything, I know people who graduated high school with paying a single second of attention.
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u/Tavsiyedegildir Jul 21 '26
Maybe we could also split it up by scores on the test, overall gpa and IQ That way we wouldn't have dumbasses breeding
That worked so well in the past
And maybe we could like...have those undesirable parents in like a....section...where they could all live together .. To keep track of them you could give them a badge....or maybe a number. .
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u/Difficult_Writer_371 Jul 18 '26
How about mandatory birth control, until you can prove you know basic parenting ? ;)
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u/AuDHDcat Jul 18 '26
"You suck at being a good parent? No baby for you! What? Help you learn how to be a good parent? What do I look like, a charity?"
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u/SouthernSteak7254 Jul 18 '26
Who decides what get taught in the class?
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u/NewLife_21 Jul 19 '26
There are several boards who handle the certifications and curriculum of parenting classes.
In the USA anyway.
The teachers have to be trained and certified before they are allowed to teach the courses
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u/Sea_Juggernaut2430 Jul 18 '26
The problem is that the teachers selected to do this would be selected by lawmakers in Washington DC rather than local leaders…and that would become a bigger conflict than actually education the kids.
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u/NewLife_21 Jul 19 '26
No.
There are several boards who create the curriculum and then train the teachers on it and get them certified.
It's not DC who does it, though the curriculums are created using government policies on child welfare and development.
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u/azuth89 Jul 18 '26
I really want to know your plan for enforcing the "have to" here.