Parenting Education

Why don’t schools train their students to become parents?
There are two parts to becoming an adult: having a job and having a family. Schools prepare children for a job, and parents prepare their children for their future families. But what if a child has bad parents? Schools have sex education, but not parenting education. And, since sex education often fails, why don’t they follow it up with parenting education? People don’t just know how to take care of a baby.

At one time last year, I taught 13 pregnant girls between the ages of 15 and 18. They don’t know how to raise a child; they don’t even know how to take care of themselves while they’re pregnant. Some of them still party and drink alcohol while they are pregnant.

Parenting education would be even better than pre-K. The only argument against it that I can think of is that people don’t all want to raise their children the same. That’s fine, but they should at least know the facts about how children develop and the effect parents have. And students should at least think about what kind of parent they want to be, like “What values do I want to teach my child?” “What kind of environment do I want to raise my child in?” “What role will my extended family play in my child’s life?” “Am I going to work or stay home and raise my child?” “Do I want my child to be religious?” People don’t wake up and become the parents they want to be; they wake up and become just like their own parents.