Need an outrage to carry you through the weekend? If you’re the parent of a school-aged child, some lawmakers in New York state think your parenting skills could use “enhancement”—and want to force you to attend a series of “parenting workshops” as a condition of your kid’s progress to seventh grade.
“Requires parents to attend support programs designed to enhance parenting skills,” reads the official description of Bill S142-2013. The bill would direct New York’s education bureaucracy to develop guidelines for the content and distribution of a series of four or more workshops, of which one would be devoted to issues of abuse. (Why a state bureaucracy would know more about “parenting skills” than parents themselves is not explained.) Not only would parents have to attend, but for good measure the bill would require employers to bestow a paid day off each year for employees who are parents to do so.
The bill has provoked a bit of a public outcry in recent weeks. Among the comments at the official state site: “How about letting us raise our own children?” “An insult and serves no purpose”; “Please keep your noses out of my home”; “The only people that will benefit from this are the ones who will charge for the classes.”
Who’d sponsor such a mind-bending assault on individual rights and the integrity of the family? The bill’s main sponsor is Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. (D‑South Bronx), with co-sponsorship from Sens. Adraino Espaillat (D‑Washington Heights) and John Sampson (D‑Brooklyn).
Senator Diaz—not to be confused with his son, Ruben Diaz Jr., who serves as Bronx borough president—is a well-known figure in New York City politics who has served in the State Senate for more than a decade. Like most of his New York City Democratic colleagues, he readily votes to approve big government programs; unlike most of them, he also ardently pursues social-conservative causes such as opposition to same-sex marriage (he’s an evangelical minister as well as a politician). In the latter capacity, he regularly wins praise from national groups claiming to speak for “pro-family” positions. One must wonder, are they aware of his scheme for mandatory parenting workshops, and is that something they consider “pro-family”?
