Would this law be sufficient to improve the lives of children?
The biggest debate would center around this question. On one hand, delivering critical information to parents on best practices in terms of nutrition for mother and child, or healthy psychological and emotional development can be very beneficial if the parents are open to receiving it. In fact, alot of organizations around the world work hard to deliver this message to new parents with some success.
However, why would a mandatory course be necessary? Why not just a free DVD handed out at the hospitals as part of a Maternity Package which includes some of the material items required to support healthy child development? Are we assuming new parents would be inherently resistant to receiving information that we must threaten to take custody of the child if they don't sit through an in-person lecture? What problem is a society really trying to solve with a law like this?
Without trying it and evaluating the data, there isn't really a way to say objectively if it would be enough to "improve the lives of children", but alot would have to go into defining what exactly we mean by that in order for such an evaluation to take place. In what ways do children's lives currently need improving? What are the reasons for the deficiencies that we are attempting to improve? How much do we measure the improvement? How much improvement would we expect to see from the implementation of this law? Without being very specific here, it is impossible to give a good answer to this question.
What complications could arise?
Well, you are systematically taking children away from their mothers, at least in some cases, so there would likely be some severe political backlash to that alone.
In terms of implementation, as mentioned, cost and practicality come into play. What happens when the flow of infants to adoptive families slows down? Suppose something changes in the equation and suddenly you have a backlog of babies? Where do they go after two months?
Also, institutionalizing infants for any reason is a really terrible idea, especially in the first two months. The benefits of breast-milk from the infant's own mother are widely understood, as is the daily nurturing that only a parent can provide. Alot of long-term damage will be done to each child forced to live in the hospital, where the child would certainly receive less attention in a ward full of infants waiting for their parents' paperwork to clear, than they would in their homes.
Cultural biases would also probably come into play at some point with regard to the classes being taught. Who gets to write the educational material? Who gets to deliver it? It's not a simple as handing out a list of do's and dont's to parents. It all has to be contextualized to the audience if it is going to be retained and implemented.
These are just a few thought-provoking ones. A comprehensive list of potential complications would be very long.
How might the law be circumvented, cheated or corrupted to make children's lives worse?
Let's not assume it has to be circumvented to make children's lives worse. 693
There are alot of practices that may be very beneficial to specific children in specific parental/cultural contexts, but aren't understood or backed by academic research. Many of these could be lost if you 'program' parents to behave in a certain way that doesn't defer to the wisdom and learning of the generations before them.
That said, I've never seen a law that could not be somehow abused or circumvented. Legal systems are always prone to this. It all depends on the lettering of the law and the social/financial resources available to those who would want to get around it.
It could also be easily corrupted by whoever is charge of both implementation and execution. The state is seizing quite a bit of power simply to implement this law, so certainly there could be all sorts of nefarious outcomes if ill-minded people gain control of these legal levers.
The law assumes that most parents would do better if they knew better. This law aims to give them a very strong incentive to learn.
According to the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child:
1. States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence.
A law that, by default, removes a child from the custody of their parents without any individual case evaluation goes far beyond incentivizing a desired behavior. It crosses many well-established ethical lines. It starts with the assumption that all parents are "bad parents" if they haven't taken the course, and makes them 'earn' the right to care for their child. 161