Dialogue: Parents rush in where society fears to tread

SHELLEY BRIDGEMAN* wonders why we are so nonchalant about our greatest responsibility - bringing a child into the world.

You need a licence to drive a car, get married, own a gun and keep a dog. If you want a credit card, you must divulge details of your finances and your employment. You have to fill out a form for a library card, and the SPCA screens you if you want to take home a cute puppy. You need to train to be a builder, a pilot or a hairdresser. You need to pass exams if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer.

But there's no licence required, no information to divulge, no training, no exams, no screening when you take on the greatest responsibility of your life - that of bringing a child into the world.

Our nonchalance regarding the bearing of children has no doubt evolved largely as a result of the prevalence of the practice. Familiarity has made us immune to what an awesome undertaking it is. Child-bearing is as common as a cold and seldom causes a stir, raises an eyebrow or even inspires a considered opinion.

Ditch our brain-washing for a second and contemplate the phrase a pregnant woman may utter - "Don't mind my enormous stomach. I'm just growing a human being in there until it's big enough to burst out of me." It would be pure science fiction if it weren't so routine.

Not only is there no prerequisite - unless you count possessing a womb - to spawning a child, but parents are under no obligation to even pledge their best intentions towards this child's welfare. When you marry your spouse, presumably a grown person capable of looking after himself or herself, you usually pledge your undying love and commitment at a solemn occasion. Yet when you're suddenly responsible for some helpless newborn baby, you just sling it in the car-seat and drive on home.

New citizens of New Zealand take part in a formal ceremony acknowledging the link with their adopted country and even the Scout and Guide movements require oaths and promises of their members. Surely it's not too much to expect of parents.

Some sort of ritual involving a vow to eternally love and care for the child would not be out of place just to prove your best intentions and to help to seal them in your heart. Or even a promise to keep the progeny warm and fed and supplied with Pokemon characters would do. Anything is better than nothing.

No training or evidence of skill is required to create a baby and raise a child. My computer came with a 15-minute instruction video but no helpful manual is supplied with a baby. Where kids are concerned, you simply muddle along with a mixture of sheer good luck, trial and error, gut instinct and unwanted advice from the well-meaning.

While child-bearing seems to be a free-for-all, there is rigorous screening for prospective parents who wish to adopt a child. These would-be parents must jump through hoops to prove not merely their fitness to be a mum and dad but that they're practically perfect candidates.

Accompanying the issue of adoption are fears that paedophiles might gain access to children in this manner. Indeed, it would be unthinkable to entrust a child to the care of such a monster. Buy why is the same thought never given to babies being born? Why are natural parents not screened for unnatural tendencies?

A woman I know looked into international adoption, mainly because she felt it more worthwhile to help kids already in troubled situations rather than breed trouble of her own. She was targeting a girl from China, where female children are not exactly flavour of the millennium. Her summation of the situation: "It seems easier to get pregnant, which doesn't seem right." Indeed it doesn't.

Some sectors of society frown upon assisted-fertility, such as IVF, while talk of cloning or tampering with genes to produce an "improved" offspring is met with shrieks of "what gives us the right to play God?" Yet surely creating another person - by any means, including the old-fashioned natural way - is about as close to playing God as it gets.

To bring a human being into the world - with the potential to become another Mother Teresa, another Adolf Hitler or anywhere between them on the spectrum of goodness and evil - is an undertaking of mammoth proportions with far-reaching potential ramifications.

Perhaps it would be more worthwhile to ensure this hugely responsible endeavour is given the weight it deserves rather than focusing on the peripheral issues.

Somehow it's easier to have an opinion on, to be outspoken about, to fill up newspaper columns with fashionable sideissues such as adoption, cloning, IVF and even the custody of Elian Gonzalez. But isn't the very basic issue of bringing children into the world deserving of our equally close attention and meaningful debate, too?

* Shelley Bridgeman is an Auckland freelance writer.