Children Should Be Raised By the State

1. Cultural UnityOne of the biggest benefits of having the state raise children would be the creation of a unitary culture. All children would be raised in a homogeneous cultural identity. One of the biggest sources of strife and conflict in modern society arises from differing cultural groups. Culture is largely and greatly instilled in children at a young age and therefore a unitary culture could be instilled in children by the state throughout childhood. Genocide in Germany, Rwanda and Bosnia all arose from cultural differences driving groups to hatred and violence towards one another. Today in urban areas gangs and even school groups are divided into differing cultural groups. This strife and division could be eliminated by a unitary cultural group. This would lead to a more peaceful and unified society. 2. BrotherhoodArising out of a unitary culture would follow a universal feeling of brotherhood. Imagine the love, attachment, bonding and selflessness that arises out of traditional family units. These things are not created by blood (as is evidence by adoptive families) but rather because you grow up as a family unit. Imagine these benefits being transferred to all citizens so that all felt as though they were part of a big family. Once a unified culture is established and the traditional family unit eliminated it is only natural to supplant that with the citizen family group. This, combined with the universal culture, would lead to a drop in crime and division among citizens as they would view one another as a family. Brothers, sisters, parents, cousins all. This type of attitude can be fostered if the state raises children. Family units are inherently divisive as they divide people from one another via tiny family units. People treat their families better than everyone else (usually) but these family groups are usually only 6 people, sometimes smaller. These feelings could be expanded to many more people and thus reap the benefits of familial connections across an entire society. 3. Already Halfway ThereA traditional school day for children runs 8 hours. If you add in before school services such as breakfast and drop off care and after school activities such as intermurals and bus rides a typical day at public school could run a kid around 12 hours. That's half of your day already. Factor in 8 hours for sleep and the public schools dominate a child's waking hours. Even if we split the day into three parts, 8 hours school, 8 hours sleep and 8 hours other time, the public schools still get half of the child's waking hours. Yet very few people have qualms about public school raising their children though public school is a state entity. Are not the potential benefits proposed by an entire state run childhood worth those extra few hours for the kids? The state already dominates many of a child's formative years with no outcry at all. Is it that difficult to imagine handing the rest of the reigns over? I think not. In fact, doing so has many more benefits for the adults in society as well. 4. More Hours for AdultsRaising a child is tough work. It takes a lot of time and energy. Imagine all the time parents spend cooking, cleaning, transporting, helping, entertaining and disciplining their children. Countless hours, countless years. Imagine if those parents could get all of those hours back. Adults would have all of these countless hours back in which they could use to work, create, pursue a hobby, relax, work out or any number of things that they wanted to do. The result? A more prosperous, happy, fit, relaxed adult population which would then factor into the workplace and thus the economy. Imagine if every parent in America had 4 more hours in a day that were taken up by children. Imagine the good they could do. Imagine the work that could get done. All women could work without fear of their children if they so chose. The workforce could grow, the population and the state would be way more productive. It would be incredible. 5. EconomicsBut what about the economics? Wouldn't this cost way way way too much? Not really. It costs roughly $12,000 a year for an average American couple to raise a child [1]. Now let us assume that there are 50 million parenting couples in the United States (a number that is actually low) and we take this same $12k that they would have spent on their kids and take it in taxes. This would create an economic wash in that the parents are in the same financial situation either way, state run or not. This would raise $600,000,000,000 for the state to raise children, a significant amount from a child rearing tax alone. Now say we wanted to decrease the amount parents pay by 25% and then we sell the benefits of a state run child rearing system to the rest of the population for $2k in taxes a year. Not inconceivable. This would then raise the amount per year raised for the state to bring up children to nearly a trillion dollars. The economics are there. In fact, taxing parents who birth into the system would actually decentivise child rearing which would have a positive affect on population control making the children more manageable. The economics are there. Furthermore, such a system would create countless jobs. Jobs in construction, transportation, infrastructure and child raising and education. It would give adults more hours who would normally have children and create jobs for the economy on top of it. 6. No More Bad ParentingThere are a lot of bad parents in the world. Many social and psychological problems arise from bad parenting. Abuse, neglect, overbearing parents, underwhelming parents and stupidity run amok in the child rearing process in today's society. These things create a whole host of problems in people later when they age. These things can be severely limited or even eliminated as child rearing would be considered a career. You cannot show up to work drunk, abuse employees or beat people at the office without getting fired. This would be no different. Child abuse, neglect etc would be hampered in that the people raising the children would have no incentive or opportunity for such behavior. These types of things happen because parenting happens primarily at home, in private making abuse that much easier for parents to commit. Since state parenting would be primarily in public by employees such things would have little to no opportunity to appear. ConclusionTherefore the benefits of brotherhood and cultural unity would lead to a more unified, peaceful society with less strife and division than traditional family units create. We're already half way there to allowing the state to take care of our children, ceding them parental control on decisions concerning their upbringing is a short beneficial hop away. Adults would have far more hours in the day to work and be productive. The economics seem favorable at a glance for such a program and such a program would eliminate the negatives that come from bad parenting. Overall it would seem that the state should raise children. Thank you. [1] . http://www.babycenter.com...