Fair Start Movement

Author: Fair Start Movement

  • Fair Start Family Planning: Using One Problem to Solve Others

    Fair Start Family Planning: Using One Problem to Solve Others

    The pandemic is a good time for the uber-wealthy, the few thousand billionaires who together hold more wealth than 60% of the people on this planet, to worry about losing their place in the world’s pecking order. History has shown that plagues and pandemics are when transitions of power often happen, when the balance between rich and poor has historically shifted. And it’s hard to believe that targeting these people for a fairer distribution of power would be unjust.

    But can we use inequity to solve other problems at the same time?

    What if we leveled the playing field for kids through new family planning policies that created socially and ecologically regenerative communities? There is a policy pathway. In short, it involves gearing the progressive distribution of resources around financially incentivizing all parents to a) be ready before they have children, b) to work together to give each child born a fair start in life, and c) to embrace smaller and more sustainable families that make all of this possible. In short, the rich would pay to level the playing field for the future children of the poor.   

    This would not only address inequity, but it would also represent the most effective way to mitigate the climate and other ecological crises, and to build human rights and democracy. Fair Start family planning gives whole new meaning to the idea of living our values. And because Fair Start family planning is the fundamental human right, it overrides other rights, including the property rights of the wealthy.

    Let’s use one problem to constructively solve many others. Learn more here about the Fair Start model. 

  • Meghan and Harry Support Smaller Families. When Will Environmental Orgs?

    Meghan and Harry Support Smaller Families. When Will Environmental Orgs?

    Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are not afraid to break taboos and do what’s right. Recently, they talked about their fears and hopes for their son Archie’s future, given the way humans are destroying the planet and our kids’ futures. They took a bold step last year, promoting the idea of smaller families as the most effective way by far to protect the future.

    They are opening a conversation and laying the pathway for polices that promote sustinable and equitable family planning. Environmental organizations should be leading the charge but have been hesitant to do so, fearing backlash from donors. Urge them to stand up and support the most effective long-term solution to our biggest social and ecological crises.

    Contact the heads of these key organziations and urge them to support Fair Start family planning or other models that are as effective:

    Tweet:
    • Carter Roberts, @Carter_Roberts, president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund
    • Annie Leonard, @AnnieMLeonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA
    • Michael Brune, @bruneski, executive director of the Sierra Club
    and urge them to take a stand on the most effective way to protect our future: policies that promote sustainable and equitable family planning.

  • Is WaPo Promoting Nationalism Over Democracy?

    Is WaPo Promoting Nationalism Over Democracy?

    In a recent news analysis article, not an editorial, a Washington Post writer lamented the recent drop in U.S. fertility rate:

    A news article discusses economists’ predictions of a decline in U.S. births due to COVID-19, referencing a Brookings Institution report. A chart below shows how the Great Recession impacted birth rates.

    “Rather, the pandemic left a permanent mark on American families, with many having fewer children than they would have otherwise, leaving tens of thousands of future American citizens permanently unborn.” The author, Christopher Ingraham, went on:

    Of course, at the individual level, the fertility cost is literally incalculable. How does a parent put a price tag on a child that was never had? What is the loss to an only child who will never have siblings to play with? The discussion is a reminder that even after the pandemic is behind us, it is likely to leave a deep scar on society for years to come.

    — Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post, June 17, 2020

    Does this rhetoric — the assertion that birthing fewer children exacts a toll on society — sound familiar? It might, because this has been a talking point of nationalist leaders across the globe. Recently, Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro recently called on women in the country to have more kids to “let the homeland grow.” U.S. President Donald Trump chimed in as well, approving a barely noticed tax tweak that pays people even more money to have kids.

    This policy promotes nationalism over democracy because it pushes society away from improving birth conditions for every child; giving kids a fair start in life; ensuring that children grow up in a natural, healthy, and safe environment; and allowing everyone to exercise meaningful voices in their democracies that won’t get lost in the chaotic crowd.

    The problem with this reasoning is that the state and other institutions are artifice: Democracy and legitimate societies derive power from the individual, not the other way around. We should not have children for the state or the economy. Instead, we should cooperatively plan to have kids in ways that empower them to comprise a better future and build real democracies, not bloated nation-states and economies that demand more bodies — even in the middle of ecological and social crises.

    More crowding and poor family planning exacerbates the spread and threat of pandemics, is the worst way to exacerbate the climate crisis, and expands the inequity tearing our communities apart.

    TAKE ACTION: The Washingtion Post holds itself up as a champion of democracy, but it is promoting nationalistic policies. Because family planning is truly constitutional in nature and because the right to a fair start in life is the first and most fundamental human right, we can engage people (and especially wealthy people) pushing women to have kids to instead help pay for sustainable family planning, and for every kid to get a fair start in life. Write the Post editor Marty Baron @PostBaron, or engage him in person, and urge him to reconsider what democracy means and to pay his share to support better family planning.

  • Family Planning After Coronavirus: Why We Need Male Contraception

    Family Planning After Coronavirus: Why We Need Male Contraception

    By Sarah Johnson

    I can’t help but admire the strength and resilience I see on display every day in my nursing colleagues with whom I’ve served for the past 22 years. Like many Americans, we confront this next phase of the epidemic with a mix of worry and hope. 

    However, as medical practitioners on the front lines battling the coronavirus, it is impossible for us to ignore a feature of American life that the virus has made all too clear: the deep inequality facing communities of color, who are dealing with disproportionate infection and death rates from COVID-19, as well as longer-term health challenges like lack of access to birth control. In these communities, the epidemic will cast a long shadow — not only as families struggle to recover spiritually and economically, but as young women navigate critical moments of their lives with limited or nonexistent support from medical experts. 

    For our society to rebound, we must understand and address the root causes of the inequality that the virus has laid bare. Family planning has played a significant role in improving the lives of women and people of color since it was declared a human right, but we still have a ways to go. As we imagine a world after the arrival of this pandemic, we must ensure that the U.S.’ outdated family planning model is replaced in order to address lingering inequality and to prioritize children and communities over corporations and profits. A common-sense set of solutions is the “male pill” and long-acting, reversible male contraceptives such as Contraline and the RISUG. If fully tested and approved in the U.S., such options could empower men to share more equally in family planning, leveraging their own bodies. And studies indicate that men may be open to the idea.

    This is why Having Kids calls upon the United States Congress and the National Institute of Health to prioritize the development and deployment of male contraceptives. 

    Why Male Contraception Is Essential

    Why is male contraception important? Research shows that smaller families benefit children. It also indicates that the economic disadvantage correlated with larger families tends to perpetuate economic inequality that undermines democracy by leaving undue influence in the hands of the few. Yet in the name of economic growth, we see corporations targeting moms with costly ad campaigns to have more children for the purpose of growing the consumer base. We see sexual stimulants prioritized over birth control, and we see the U.S. tax system incentivizing larger families when incentivizing delays in pregnancy may better position women and children for equality. Economic growth-based family planning not only puts in question the planet that we’ll be able to pass down to our children, but it also leaves us more susceptible to future pandemics due to population overcrowding and decreased distance between humans and animals.

    Today in the United States, nearly half of pregnancies unintended, costing us about $15 billion each year. I remember several years ago telling one of my patients, a 37-year-old African American woman in Oakland, Calif., that her pregnancy test had come back positive. She instantly froze and began to cry. She wanted the baby, but she did not have the financial resources to take care of the child. She was then faced with a very difficult decision. Scenes like this play out every day across America and the world. 

    In a few short months, the pandemic has made family planning even more difficult. Condom shortages and lack of access to birth control during this social distancing period can lead to serious socioeconomic consequences for young couples. Going forward, we must empower men with equal opportunity to safely participate in their right to family planning using their own bodies. 

    Male Birth Control and Modern Family Planning

    What options are already on the table? Aside from the “pullout” method and abstinence, there are more than 12 options for pregnancy prevention available to women. Meanwhile, two options are available to men on the U.S. market: condoms or vasectomy. While there have been several attempts over the past several decades at developing viable options for males, critics say that sexism may be the largest barrier, in part evidenced by the early termination of clinical trials on a male version of “the pill,” due to side effects these critics say women have been experiencing for decades.

    The obstacles in front of us are not insurmountable, and we cannot afford to decelerate on the road to scientific breakthrough. In today’s politically polarized America, any solution that pushes us forward while side-stepping traditional political divides should be a no-brainer. Falling squarely within the pre-fertilization category of birth control options, male contraceptives are less politically contentious, in part thanks to the current pope’s less stringent stance on contraceptives. Abortion tends to dominate the family planning public discourse, but the real conversation should be about modernizing family planning, so that women and their partners can have equal access to resources and information to plan better lives for themselves and their families. 

    Downstream approaches to improving children’s welfare are failing kids and endangering our future. The most effective way to eliminate the greatest threats to children, the environment, and our democracies is to ensure better conditions for every child from the moment they are born. Let’s start at the source. When communities and parents cooperatively embrace better family planning, we can invest more in every child and create the future we all deserve.

    For these reasons, we at Having Kids call upon the National Institute of Health and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, who lead the congressional committees on health that oversee family planning matters, to increase funding for the development of male contraceptives. 

    As we salute nurses for their work on the front lines of the pandemic, we should also think about the long-term resilience of our healthcare system and our communities, and how state-of-the-art family planning drives better patient outcomes for a healthier, better-functioning society.

    Sarah Johnson, a family nurse practitioner with 15 years serving patients in critical care and 22 years in allopathic medicine, graduated with an M.S. in Nursing with high honors from Georgetown University and currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a founding board member of Having Kids, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness for The Fair Start Model, a human rights-based, child-focused approach to family planning.

  • “Reversing the Gender Imbalance With Male Contraceptives”

    “Reversing the Gender Imbalance With Male Contraceptives”

    [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.7.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

    By Erika Mathews

    Earlier this month, The New York Times published an article that made us feminists shake in our boots. “The crisis seems to be cementing traditional gender roles,” the piece read. A poll for the Times found that women with families are bearing the brunt of the increased workload due to coronavirus stay-at-home measures. Even if women earn more than their husbands, the responsibility of housework, childcare, or distance learning for their school-age children tends to fall upon the mother.

    Unfortunately, it may not come as a surprise to many that women in opposite-sex partnerships often disproportionately shoulder certain loads within the partnership. As an example, this has been happening with our bodies in the realm of family planning for millennia.

    The Coronavirus and Inequality

    Given that May is the month back in 1968 that the U.N. declared family planning a human right, it seems fitting to shine light on an opportunity before American society to drill away at outdated gender roles. It’s also an opportunity to tackle the socioeconomic inequality we’ve witnessed the coronavirus expose.

    The opportunity I’m referring to lies in male contraceptives. The challenges around gender parity and socioeconomic inequality that are now staring us in the face amid this pandemic are exactly why Having Kids is calling upon Congress and the National Institute of Health to prioritize the research, development, and deployment of the male pill and other long-acting, reversible male contraceptives — or “LARCs,” for short. 

    Male Birth Control and Greater Equality

    How can LARCs address such longstanding problems so deeply embedded within our society? 

    Research shows that smaller families benefit children and that the economic disadvantage correlated with the alternative tends to perpetuate a greater divide between those with and without. Still, we see the U.S. tax system incentivizing larger families, though incentivizing pregnancy delay may better set up women and future generations for greater equality. 

    Since family planning was declared a human right five decades ago, women have made great strides in terms of physical and economic well-being. Still, nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. today are unintended, which costs taxpayers $15 billion annually. In a few short months, the COVID-19 pandemic has made family planning even more difficult due to lack of access to contraceptives and to reproductive healthcare.

    While the discussion around family planning often centers on abortion, it should go without saying in today’s politically polarized America that any solution propelling us forward — while side-stepping partisan hot spots — should be a no-brainer. This should be baseline territory. Pre-fertilization forms of birth control, a category into which male contraception falls nicely, show promise to be excellent candidates for building bridges across the political aisle. Unfortunately, apart from the “pullout” method and abstinence, women in the U.S. currently have over a dozen options for pregnancy prevention while men have only two: condoms and vasectomies. 

    Why Men Should Take Larger Role in Family Planning

    Recent studies show that American men want the ability to use their bodies to further participate in their right to family planning. While vestiges of a more sexist yesteryear set speed bumps on the track toward deploying more viable male options, we’re incredibly close to breakthroughs in the field, and this is no time to let up on the gas pedal. If fully tested and approved in the U.S., LARC options like RISUG and Contraline could empower men to share more equally in family planning through leveraging their own bodies, helping reverse the trend of traditional gender roles being “cemented.” Our friends at the Male Contraceptive Initiative have outlined several others.

    Again, men want more options to play a larger role in family planning. We women — certainly in our new, less certain reality when fewer couples are opting to get pregnant — could use the support. Ultimately, when communities and parents cooperatively embrace better family planning, we can invest more in every child and create the future we all deserve.

    For these reasons, we at Having Kids call upon the National Institute of Health and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo — chairpeople of congressional committees on health that oversee family planning matters — to increase funding for the research and development of male contraceptives. 

    A variety of safe, commonsense, accessible options, along with communities and parents cooperatively embracing better family planning, are key to providing coming generations the future they deserve. Male LARCs would serve as a huge step forward in getting us there.

    Erika Mathews is the executive director of Having Kids, a U.S.-based non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness for The Fair Start Model, a human rights-based, child-focused approach to family planning. Erika holds a bachelor’s degree in English/Journalism and German from Rutgers University.

    [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]
  • World Environment Day 2020: Urging 100 Key Influencers to Adopt Sustainable and Equitable Family Planning

    World Environment Day 2020: Urging 100 Key Influencers to Adopt Sustainable and Equitable Family Planning

    Today, Having Kids is urging 100 key world environmental influencers to move from our current and failing and unsustainable approach to family planning to a cooperative system based on what all children objectively need. This new system is based upon a variety of peer-reviewed research papers, and has been featured in Newsweek, Salon, Hello Magazine, and many other popular outlets. That change has never been more vital, given recent reactions to vast racial and economic inequity, the ongoing threat of pandemics, and massive volatility in world population prospects.

    Read the full letter here. 

    Our current family planning system does not guarantee children any minimum level of welfare or equity, and does not take into account impacts on our ecologies, or the relationship between family planning and the building of human rights-based democracies. As our ecological and social conditions continue to deteriorate, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current system failed to account for a variety of factors. It was a mistake, and one that enables policies that Nobel laureate Steven Chu likened to a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

    The alternative we propose, called Fair Start, is simple: communities help parents to plan and wait to be ready before having kids, and ensure resources to give all kids a fair start in life, and smaller and more regenerative families make it all possible. We believe it is the best interpretation of the fundamental right to have children. The Fair Start Model is ten to twenty times more effective at protecting children and our environment, and building human rights and democracy, than other policies that address these issues. For many reasons, it is an overriding human right which can be furthered by all means effective. 

    According to Executive Director Erika Mathews: “Because our current system of family planning oppresses future generations and puts us all at existential risk, it is illegitimate, and an impediment to the constituting of true democracies.” 

  • Want to Hold Rich White Men Accountable to the Law? Let’s Start with Elon Musk.

    Want to Hold Rich White Men Accountable to the Law? Let’s Start with Elon Musk.

    Police brutalizing people of color and the poor is nothing new, but the issue is finally getting the attention it deserves.

    Meanwhile rich white men like Elon Musk, who’s looted billions in profits during the pandemic, can ignore COVID-19 shutdown orders and reopen a car factory rife with racism, and nothing happens. People like Musk and Donald Trump – born rich – are playing with their space toys, launching a mission that does little good for most people, and seems like some version of the movie Elysium, while black men are being killed down here on Earth.

    • In the United States, one set of laws exists for the rich and another one applies to the poor. This system is illegitimate.
    • This double system will persist as long as an extreme imbalance of wealth and power remains. Violence is one form of power, money is another, and the solution has to deal with both. We need to focus on a fundamental fix to the massive imbalance right now, and the one with the greatest impact – by far – for the most numerous and vulnerable classes.
    • Because a child’s right to a fair start in life is the fundamental human right that overrides all other interests including property rights, we can use that right to redistribute resources, end the inequity, and build the real constitutional democracies we all deserve.

    Take Action to Hold Musk Accountable

    Contact the California governor here, explain why Musk committed a crime when he reopened the California Tesla plant, and demand action. Let’s see how legitimate our system really is.

    Find and engage Musk in person, lawfully and peacefully, and demand that the resources he’s using to colonize space, worsen inequity, and turn his own six children into billionaires be used instead to fund Fair Start family planning and the constituting of real democracies. Musk, whose wealth originated from a system of colonization and exploitation in Africa and who very likely has a net negative impact on the environment, has publicly mocked the Occupy movement. He has also consistently promoted family planning systems designed to create massive economies filled with workers and consumers that serve the rich, rather than human rights based systems that empower people. Instead of speaking out, Musk is deliberatly using SpaceX to distract people away from an issue of justice, to focus instead on his newest display of wealth.

    Finally, we can move from a regressive legal system based on violence at its worst, and incentives as a lesser evil, to one based on true self-determination, starting with the birth of every child. Urge our leadership to adopt Fair Start family planning as the fundamental basis for our laws and policies.

  • Effective Planned Parenthood: Offering Children a Quality Lifestyle and Contributing to Planetary Sustainability

    Effective Planned Parenthood: Offering Children a Quality Lifestyle and Contributing to Planetary Sustainability

    By Betty Martin-Finneran, Ph.D.

    As I reflect on my lived experience of ineffective, accidental parenthood, this famous quote comes to mind: “I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor; rich is better.” This quote has been attributed to both Mae West and Sophie Tucker, but who cares who said it? I will put it bluntly: Too many hungry mouths to feed will slow down your progress and your share of the riches of life. I believe that most of us want to be rich, although many will not admit it.

    Growing up in a large family had the downside of providing me with a poverty consciousness as opposed to a consciousness of wealth, because I grew up in a household in which there were not enough financial resources to sustain the needs of 10 children. Accidental childbirth was the rule, not the exception, in the 1950s. I was fortunate. I loved to read about ordinary people who overcame challenges of all types. Fed up with living a poverty lifestyle, I joined the Air Force after graduating from high school. My tour in the Air Force funded the start of my college education and inspired me to become an educator.

    As a teacher and tutor, I interact with parents from many socioeconomic levels. It seems to me that like my parents, far too many of these parents were not clear about their motives for parenting. I wonder whether the partners had a clear communication about bringing a child into the world beforehand: Did they consider their financial readiness to provide a quality lifestyle for a child?

    Effective vs. Ineffective Parenting


    I have had the pleasure of teaching and tutoring children whose parents are financially prepared for effective parenting. These parents have sufficient financial resources to not only send their children to expensive private schools, but also to hire tutorial services to supplement the child’s education as needed. It has been my experience, as a teacher and tutor, that the recipients of ineffective planned parenthood struggle, fight for survival resources, and live in fear. Frustrated by their parents’ and society’s inability to give them access to the resources they so desperately needed from birth, marginalized children tend to join gangs and are not interested in obtaining an education. Survival of their microcosmic society matters most.

    In contrast, I have noticed that the attitudes of the children who are recipients of effective planned parenting show signs of making positive contributions to the planet’s sustainability. Without the fear of limited survival resources, effectively parented children are more thoughtful and compassionate toward humankind. They question the nature of what is happening in the world and want to know how to stop social injustice, especially gang activity and school shootings. Working with the parents of the effectively parented children revealed that they parented on purpose. They were most often well-educated professionals who were if not rich, financially well off.

    ‘Positive Checks’ on Overpopulation

    I read a thought-provoking article by Arthur M. Marx (2018) titled “Overpopulation in the Era of Climate Change.” He spoke of what Thomas Robert Malthus (1798) referred to as a “positive check” on overpopulation. Gang membership and increased school shootings, in response to perceived shortage of resources, are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to planetary threats. The issue of overpopulation has continued to mushroom. According to Malthus, Mother Nature periodically enforces “positive checks” on overpopulation.

    Marx offered: “What would happen if people could not restrain themselves from churning out more little bundles of joy? In that case, Malthus suggested that positive checks on human life spans would kick in — and by “positive,” he famously meant three particularly negative consequences: war, disease, and famine. Put another way, if too many humans were coming into the world, then more would have to depart into the not-so-sweet hereafter sooner rather than later to mitigate the consequences of overpopulation.” This writer suggests that we must all do our part by examining our motives for parenting in alignment with planetary sustainability.

    “We must also stop proliferating,” Stephen McCarty wrote this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. As I stated before, accidental, unplanned pregnancy was the rule, not the exception, in the mid-20th century for the population who could afford children the least. Working as a teacher and tutor in underserved communities, I have noticed that this mentality among the parents has not changed much. It is if these parents are sleepwalking.

    Enter COVID-19, our wake-up call! I find it synchronistic that Marx’s article appeared almost a year and a half before COVID-19. All that has happened since the COVID-19 blessing or curse has given me food for thought: Is the current pandemic a macrocosm of the effects of worldwide overpopulation?

    I offer that we need to fund the education of persons who are considering parenting more than or at least as much as we fund projects to help underserved children.

    About Dr. Betty Martin-Finneran

    Dr. Betty Martin-Finneran completed her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies at The Union Institute & University Graduate College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her area of concentration was Transformative Learning with a strong Jungian transpersonal psychology emphasis—sacred psychology. She completed her Master of Science Degree in Information Management Technology at Grantham University in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, Dr. Martin-Finneran works as an Instructional Associate at Berryessa Union School District in San Jose, California. In addition, she is an online and face-to-face ESL instructor at Techworld Language Solutions of Troy, Michigan.

    Works Consulted

    Malthus, T. R. (1798). An Essay on the Principle of Population. Retrieved May 17, 2020

    Marx, A. M. (2018, April 15). Overpopulation in the era of climate change. Magellan TV. Retrieved May 17, 2020, from https://www.magellantv.com/articles/overpopulation-in-the-era-of-climate-change

    McCarty, S. (2020, April 20). Why Covid-19 is a human overpopulation problem – perhaps humans are the virus? Retrieved May 17, 2020, from https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3080360/why-covid-19-human-overpopulation-problem.

  • New Generations Are Changing the Way We Plan Families and Are Demanding Fair Start. Take Action.

    New Generations Are Changing the Way We Plan Families and Are Demanding Fair Start. Take Action.

    Author Deanna Young (Deanna also recently called Donald Trump out for violating international law.)

    In the past, women were generally expected to have kids, few thought about whether large families were actually sustainable, and almost no one considered the possibility of would-be parents cooperatively working to maximize the conditions into which their children would be born.

    And though the way we plan families is evolving toward a model that’s more sustainable and equitable, what’s the next phase? How do we catalyze this transition? 

    Readiness for Parenthood: Opening Up the Discussion

    It’s actually pretty simple: Break the taboo around publicly discussing what it means to be ready to have kids and around what we deserve from the wealthy and from our governments to give every kid a fair start in life. Some moms, pressed by the Covid-19 crisis, are starting to do just that. 

    I don’t have a child, but I may one day. And the most effective thing I can do to protect that future is to demand a human-rights based system of family planning over the oppressors in big business and big government who are blocking that collective process, join those voices, and speak out. 

    I and many other young voices are willing to delay having kids until we are ready, have smaller and sustainable families, and work together to ensure a fair start for all of our kids. 

    Younger generations are willing to embrace a collectivist vision around parenting, opening up the discussion around readiness for parenthood by authentically and transparently discussing our own capacities for properly parenting any children we may have. We realize that a lack of social concern and governmental provision has made parental readiness an assumption — but not a foregone conclusion — for young adults. And we know that the discussion around the decision to have kids is bigger than ourselves, which is why we’re willing to forgo some degree of personal privacy to speak out about it. Achieving collective goals — like fair starts in life for each child born in the future — requires an organized focus and intention toward the greater good.

    Ross Douthat and the Push for Procreation

    The people who benefited from poor family planning and the flow of consumers, cheap labor, and taxpayers it created are pushing back against the trend in delayed pregnancies and lower fertility rates. Ross Douthat, driven by his religion, is one of the best examples of those pushing women to have more kids, irrespective of how it’d affect the environment, economic inequality, and our democracy. 

    His attempt to pull us backward is a manifest threat to our and our kids’ future. The question is not why women should have more kids: It’s what Ross is doing to ensure a fair start in life for all kids relative to the well-to-do start he is giving his own kids.

    Action Step: Reach Out for Answers

    Tweet Ross @DouthatNYT, or find and engage him peacefully and lawfully in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, to get answers.