Have you ever had your parenting skills critiqued as your child bawled on an airplane, or had someone stop you at a park to tell you you’re doing it all wrong? Let’s just say that if you know it, you know it.

It’s useful to contemplate parental know-it-alls from well outside the proverbial arena as Louisiana’s HB 570, frequently described as the “App Store Accountability Act,” makes its way through Louisiana’s House. If parents don’t exactly take well to parenting advice obnoxiously provided by strangers, what will they think of politicians dictating parenting styles from Baton Rouge? It’s not unrealistic to speculate that more than a few parents reading this opinion piece are sighing in response to the arrogant notion that good parenting can be legislated.

Sadly, that’s what proponents of HB 570 are in the process of doing right now. Some members of Louisiana’s political class are arrogantly substituting themselves for the state’s parents, and in the process, imagining they can write good parental outcomes.

HB 570 would, among other things, mandate age verification and parental approval for minors under the age of 18 when it comes to the downloading or purchase of apps utilized by smartphone or computer users. Implied in the Act is that lawmakers want to aid parents in the protection of young people from potentially harmful online content.

On its face, some will briefly forget how annoying parenting advice offered without request can be ahead of asking what’s not to like about an Act that protects young people. It’s not an unreasonable question, but it’s one that the answer to reveals the superfluous, insulting, and worst of all, the dangerous nature of 570. They think they can help parents with laws? How insulting. Which requires a backtrack.

First, there’s nothing mandated in HB 570 that parents can’t already do on their own. Please stop and think about the previous point, parents in particular. Really, who among us requires a law to be good, conscientious and watchful? By extension, who among us would blithely hand over screen-time rules to lawmakers?

It all speaks of the superfluous nature of 570, but also its insulting qualities. Parents put so much time and effort into parenting, only for legislators to arrogate themselves oversight of young people. Sorry, but no law or collection of laws will ever come close to replacing what parents painstakingly do for their kids daily.

To which some will not unreasonably point out that HB 570 is not meant for the parents who routinely go beyond laws existing or imagined in the protection of their offspring. As in the proposed law is about protection for the young people whose parents aren’t as conscientious and watchful, but who need top-quality supervision just the same. The previous rationale perhaps sounds noble, but looked at more critically, it’s strong evidence of just how perilous HB 570 could be.

Seriously, how harmful it would be if the passage of a law billed as protection for children (or the children not presently being parented enough) gives parents false comfort of the sort that results in them reducing their vigilance even a little or, in the case of seemingly indifferent parents, frees them to reduce their vigilance even more. As opposed to protecting those who need protection the most, that which reduces keeping a watchful eye on children to laws would create a false sense of parental security at a time when insecurity resulting in greater parental oversight is most needed.

As HB 570 heads to a vote, the easy thing for legislators to do will be to vote “yea” for what perhaps sounds good. Except that there’s nothing good about reducing what’s so important to the counting of heads, and much more troubling, there’s little that’s more distasteful than politicians substituting their lawmaking for the full-time job of parenting.

John Tamny is the president of the Parkview Institute.