title: Incompetent parenting: its causes and cures.
abstract: The author argues that the current sharp increase in the proportion of unsocialized youth is primarily due to overburdened, incompetent, or sociopathic parenting. Because socialization, like language-learning, occurs in early childhood, the only solution to this problem is to provide alternative rearing environments for high-risk children. Parental training, adoption, professionalized foster care, group homes, and boarding schools are components of the necessary infrastructure. The best long-term solution, parental licensure, might become politically feasible once voters come to fully understand the costs to the children, and to the commonwealth, of the tradition that places procreative rights at the head of the list of human rights.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455-0344, USA.
authors.forename: D T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Lykken
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016487:Parenting; D011247:Pregnancy; D011253:Pregnancy in Adolescence