You should need a license to have children

I understand your first paragraph, that after a child was born, a decision should be made based on tests, whether the child stays with its biological parents or not. Unfit parents are already taken away custody of their children when they mistreat them in the current system. But this also raises another concern, which I would like to make into argument number 4: 4. What happens to children who's parents do not get a license? The answer would ultimately have to be, placing them in homes, foster families, adoption or other forms of state care. How do know their childhood is going to better in those facilities. Children in homes aren't always the happiest, foster families could be just as incapable of parenthood as their biological parents. In most countries, probably the UK as well(I am from Germany, so I have to make some assumptions about the UK at this point), institutions like child services and foster home already suffer from chronicle overload, financially and by the means of pure workload. The situation would worsen if more children fall into the system.(The requirement of a license to keep one's children would lead to more people who have to give their children away) The demand for adoptions and foster children however most likely would not increase at the same time. Adoption agencies could no longer enforce their strong adoption criteria, because there would be so many children that they would practically have to "take anyone". concerning argument #1 I'm sorry, but the fact that China does something is just not a valid reason to ignore the human rights! Nations like the UK or Germany are bound to the human rights at the very basis of their legal systems. And that is for a very good reason! Also China's motivation for their 1-child-rule is completely different from what you are suggesting. China introduced this policy, because the population was growing too fast. In most European countries(including UK, and especially Germany) we have the opposite problem these days. There are too few children being born(http://en.wikipedia.org...). I don't want to get too far off-topic here, the buzzword for that is "demographic change", which can easily be googled. concerning argument #2 And that exactly is the point. I for example, would consider cooking a very important skill for at least one of the parents to have. You, however, don't. The reason for that is that "parenting skills" are highly subjective. There is an almost endless list of important factors, most of which cannot be measured with an accurate scientific method. Not to mention that such tests would open a very wide field for corruption. Taking someone's child away is a very serious matter and should not be based on subjective doubts. concerning argument #3 Again, China doing something is no reason to do it in the UK as well. Besides, it has never been proven, that the one-child-policy actually contributes to society, let alone to the well-being of individual families and children. Families in which children have a bad childhood are often also those with little financial resources. Charging those families with fines or even sending one of the parents to prison will be counterproductive regarding the child's well-being. Foster Families have been discussed in argument #4.