Stardust Family

By Soph Myers-Kelley

Picture in a near future, Japan is managing the perceived low birth-rate crisis in addition to the societal scourge that is child abuse with one solution; requiring parental licenses for those who want to raise children. Prospective parents must pass several examinations-including a 2-week immersive examination led by a child evaluator.

It is in this utopian science fiction manga where we find one such child, Hikari, and his experience evaluating hundreds of prospective parents for licensure. Hikari is, rightly so, disenchanted and unenthused when working with these couples hoping to become parents. In testing their parenting skills he’s seen it all; anxious parents, fearful parents, fake-cheerful parents, and yes, physically abusive parents. With a fair and discerning eye, Hikari and the other child evaluators test as objectively as they can to ensure that those who have the privilege of raising children are truly capable of doing so.

However, the utopia that this child policy appears to protect contains an insidious underbelly. One’s societal standing is far too entrenched in whether one passes and obtains licensure or not. Failing one’s evaluation could lead to career and financial loan opportunities being closed off to the applicant. Parents who have children outside of the system are considered criminal and once discovered, the children removed from those families are often ostracized further.

When the evaluators, who are children, visit prospective parents for those two-week evaluations, a lot can go wrong. In the evaluation process, it is inevitable that the children will cross some adults who aren’t worthy of passing (e.g., they might be child abusers), the child evaluators receive that abuse that those potential parents-to-be would’ve probably done to their own children, if given the opportunity. The children are regularly making connections with new adults who are understandably driven by the intention of getting licensure, rather than getting to know the child in front of them. Once the evaluation period has passed, the adults oftentimes forget about the child who evaluated them entirely, as they are focused more on whether they passed and can have children of their own. This grates on the child evaluator’s psyches over time.

As someone going through the fostering licensure process now in the United States, I find some eerie similarities to the process of applying to foster vs. applying to parent in the fictional world of Stardust Family. Like in those courses I take, this book makes you question what a family unit is meant to provide, the impact of good families on making good societies, the adult problems and decisions we collectively push onto children, the ethical conundrum of requiring licensure to raise children and which groups lose because of it, and the acknowledgement that all parents (even good ones) make mistakes.

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Soph Myers-Kelley is a medical librarian living in North Carolina. They can be followed at https://www.instagram.com/thesofakingofficial/