First comes love, then comes marriage, then come the baby carriage? Not neccesarily in that order, if  it happens that way at all. But New York's Rockland County has a legislator, Jacques Michel, who apparently thinks we're still back in 1955. He's advocating a measure that would require people to take parenting classes before applying for a marriage license.

It's one of those things that sounds like a good idea – until you think about it. First, not everyone who wants to get married plans to have kids. Sure, they may change their minds somewhere down the line, but married doesn’t equal parents.

And of course, parents doesn’t equal married. Now I'll come out as maybe a little righty here, and say that maybe, if you are in a loving and committed relationship with the person with whom you are raising a baby, why not make it legal so everybody is all nice and protected in the eyes of the court? But plenty of people find themselves in a less cut-and-dried situation and step up to the plate, or don't – and would their children not deserve trained parents too, just like those in more traditional families?

And of course there are single parents, and gay parents, and grandparents as parents, and so on.
Even so, I am enough of a fan of pre-wedding counseling to think maybe this isn’t the worst idea ever, until I read this quote from Michel about his reasoning: "Because gang leaders are taking the position of parenting. They are luring our children, saying your parent is not taking care of you. Let us take care of you."

Ooohhhhhh-kay.