presents
 The Parenting License

An interactive DVD
by michael dare

     In the movie Parenthood, Keanu Reeves says "You need a license to fish and a license to drive, but any jerk can become a parent."
     It's a funny line, partially because the idea of an actual parenting license seems so absurd. Obviously there is no way to prevent people from becoming parents just because they weren't issued a license.
     But if there were such a parenting license, what would the questionnaire look like? What are the most important things that every parent needs to know before taking that baby home from the hospital?
     I suggest putting these questions on the web and soliciting world wide expert opinion on the most important and practical questions every parent needs to know the answer to.

     Let's say we narrow it down to 25 questions. The world does not need another questionnaire. Hospital lobbies are full of pamphlets, and bookstores are full of paperbacks about how to parent.
     What's important is to find the best way to force the parent to retain the information. The actual act of parenting is full of emergency situations where you don't have time to look it up in a book.

     John Cleese found the perfect answer to this question. In his brilliant series of corporate training tapes such as Closing the Deal or Managing a Meeting, each session begins with a recreation of Cleese doing everything absolutely wrong. These openings are hysterical. The rest of the tape goes over his performance step-by-step, showing precisely what he did wrong in each circumstance, then showing the correct procedure. Research has shown that viewers who find themselves in similar circumstances remember what Cleese did wrong, which guides them towards the correct course of action. Cleese's tapes work, which is why they are the most popular corporate training tapes in the world.
    The Parenting License will use the same technique of humorous negative re-enforcement. It will be constructed as a series of questions with multiple choice answers, some true, some false, some totally absurd. Click on an answer and see a short film clip explaining the ramifications of your choice. If you pick the wrong one, you end up back at the same question. Until you pick the correct answer and view the clip we want you to see, you cannot get to the next question. It can work many different ways.

    Sometimes there's only one right answer, sometimes many. Let's say the question is:

     Click on 1) and see a film clip of Rosanne Barr saying "Cloth diapers are the way to go. They're more comfortable, they cost less, and they don't end up in landfills like disposable diapers..."
     After the short film clip, you find yourself back at the same question. This time you click on 2) and see a film clip of Peg Bundy from Married with Children saying "It's stupid not to use disposable diapers. They're easy and you can just throw them away. Besides, washable diapers use more energy because you have to wash and dry them..."
     Click on 3) and see Maggie Simpson from The Simpsons crawl up on the sofa without any diapers, then crawl down again. Homer comes in, sits on the sofa, gets a strange look, stands up, looks at the sofa and shrieks "D'oh!"
     In the case of this question, there is no right answer. We just want the viewer to understand the options, so the only way to get through to the next question is to view all three answers.

     People will naturally click on the wrong answers just to see what happens. Negative reinforcement is a strong educational tool, and The Parenting License will take full advantage of it. Each question will have totally absurd answers and equally absurd clips to go with them.
     Of course all the viewer has to do is keep clicking until they find the right answer. There's no way to lose. Anyone who keeps clicking will automatically make it through, and they will unquestionably have viewed the clips we want them to see.
     Once the viewer correctly answers the final question, they are congratulated, and a Parenting License is printed out. It says...

"YOUR NAME is hereby issued a PARENTING LICENSE. You have successfully completed our questionnaire, and as far as we are concerned, you are prepared to take care of your child. This will be the most difficult job of your life. Live up to it. You are a great parent."

     This is obviously not an official document. It is simply a piece of positive reinforcement for any parent to put on their wall to remind them of what they have learned. The actual wording should be worked out using suggestions from the experts.
     Once a working version of this CD-ROM is prepared, we go to the head of some inner city maternity ward and ask to conduct an experiment. We ask his permission to set up a portable CD-ROM player, a TV, and a printer and show it to all new mothers while they are waiting to get their babies. They're just watching TV in their rooms anyway.

     Keep track of these mothers. I believe it is guaranteed that, at some point, we will discover that we have saved a life. We'll get a call from a mother who says "my baby bit into an electrical wire, and I remembered what to do from your DVD. I performed CPR, and the baby is fine."
     Then we will get an obstetrician to say "I actually feel much safer releasing babies to mothers who have completed The Parenting License."

     Next, we send the results of the study, plus a copy of the DVD, to the appropriate government agency (Hillary Clinton?), and it will end up in every maternity ward in the country.


dareland