Childbearing license

In most civilized regions, one must apply for a childbearing license to become unsterilized and have children.

It’s not too hard to get such a license. Basically one just needs to show they have the means and intelligence to raise a child without abusing it. There are strict laws to make sure there are no racial eugenics, discrimination against parental types (single parents, gay parents, polyamorous parents and all manner of non-binary/non-nuclear relationships are all acceptable) or other forms of denial. Basically if one shows they know the kid will poop and vow not to beat it up when it does, they're fine to go. Provided you have enough money.

The license is subsequent to the adulthood tests and involves both genetic tests to screen for inheritable disease (which does not deny one the right to reproduce, but means they have to get the embryo screened for it if it’s a possibility) and education in child raising and so on.

There’s little cultural effect beyond a low rate of child abuse or abandonment, and a lack of hereditary disease and the like. It’s not used to make cookie-cutter offspring to serve the state or any such thing.

One has to screw up at a legal level to lose the right (and their kids). Some punishments are permanent, like for violent physical child abuse, and others simply demand one be re-educated, for instance if one left their child in the pogo for an hour while they got a manicure. One can be denied a license for lacking the funds to care for a child but will not lose their license for dropping below the level after their birth, unless it’s for child-depriving reasons like drug abuse. Part of the license is that the applicant has the right to accept government child care funds, so nobody’s child can suffer drastically due to their parents’ poverty.

The licenses work much like driver’s licenses when they’re taken away. If one loses it for being a generally poor parent they can probably get it back in time by proving they can and will do better. If they hit your child they never get the license or child back. This applies to corporal punishment in any form, even a light spanking, it’s considered abuse flat out in UNEGA.

Also note that the child in question, as soon as they’re able to communicate, has input on their parents status. They grade their parents annually and though their statements are not taken as 100% true and final, what the kid has to say is very seriously considered when it comes to the parent’s rating.

The rules yield a very “nanny state” sort of culture with “hippie” underpinnings, especially things like the spanking ban. If one has a kid, the state is breathing down their neck constantly. Their privacy is all but abandoned when they get a license, that’s part of why it’s not in the normal adulthood tests.

About half the planet though has no license system, and features spankings and all.

The first childbearing tests hit with the company takeover after the end of the First World Cold War, circa 2090. This was also the dawn of the adulthood tests, which were also were specifically concerned with child licensing, the other rights of adulthood granted were almost incidental.

The world had just hit 20 Billion people and a complaint about the prior religious extremist era was rampant child abuse, with some even implementing the biblical admonition that disobedient children should be stoned to death. When the companies took over, the majority of people demanded they limit overpopulation by maintaining control of how many children were born, and demanded only responsible people be allowed to have them.

Responsibility had to be defined though, thus the first adulthood tests were as political as voting rights in America, with hardline atheists insisting people who were devout before the revolutions not be allowed to have children and the rich insisting the poor not be allowed to breed more poor people. This lead to decades of vicious political and corporate bickering about the definition of a responsible parent. In the end, religion was outwardly banned but it was decided that previous religious affiliations could not be used to deny parenthood licenses, allowing underground religion to survive. Money issues were deemed too variable to control, and though one had to prove they were capable of making money, they didn’t have to be making that money when they applied.

The population fell over the next century to 15 billion at its lowest, but as corporate control declined over regions such as Bharat and America, it grew back to 20 Billion by 2230. Better than the projected globally fatal 80 Billion it would’ve been without the licensing.