We appreciate the move to exercise corporate citizenship by forcing accountability on platforms like Facebook and Youtube. Cracking down on fake news is good. But is Unilever’s standard too broad? What is considered acceptable content? They have massive spending power to influence the content that we and our kids see.
The company claims it wants to protect children. Are we protecting children and creating a stronger democracy by allowing corporations have a larger voice, as citizens have a smaller voice?
If Unilever wants civility on digital platforms, it should consider the impact of family planning on our becoming, over time, a developed and civil society. Rather than encouraging parents to ignore their concerns and just have kids, it should encourage smaller and more sustainable families that cooperate to plan a fair start for every child. Instead of promoting censorship after-the-fact, Unilever should promote sustainable families that thoughtfully develop children for a civil, rather than consumerist, society.
Tweet Unilever CEO Paul Polman at @PaulPolman and politely suggest the following:
We want civility without the requirement for censorship. Use your influence to promote better family planning and thoughtful citizens, not an infinite supply of silenced consumers.
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[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]On Universal Children’s Day, Having Kids called on President Trump and Congress to comply with their obligations under international law, and dump their two-pronged population growth policies that limit women’s access to things like contraception while increasing tax incentives to urge them to have more kids. As noted in our press release, the organization sent its open letter to Trump on behalf of Deanna Young, a concerned citizen whose rights Trump is violating.
Deanna Young, whose rights are at issue, had this to say: “The right to have children can’t be interpreted to hurt kids, or destroy our environment. This isn’t rocket science.”
Larger and thoughtlessly-planned families are the fastest way to exacerbate climate change and other environmental and social crises. Yet Trump and many in Congress are openly pushing for bigger families. Intentionally endangering our kids and future generations just to meet his shortsighted “more people equal more money” agenda is a violation international law.
Instead of a cutting off access to reproductive health services and a cash-for-babies scheme, Having Kids is calling for a child-first and truly human-rights basedFair Start family planning system. Recently, Republicans moved to modify tax-advantaged “529” educational savings accounts – used almost exclusively by the well-off – to allow fetuses to become beneficiaries. Instead, Having Kids is urging Trump and Congress to work with states to fully fund those accounts for all prospective parents and children through progressively-scaled contributions. These accounts would also require some cooperative contribution from parents (again, progressively scaled) before they have kids.
Tweet @RealDonaldTrump, and tell him that pro-natalist policies exacerbate climate change.
The tax proposal, which cut similar credits for adopting a child, is part of a larger Republican move that simultaneously cuts off access to family planning services that would allow for smaller families in a country where half of the pregnancies are unplanned, and which recently included one Republican lawmaker trying to limit access to abortions because doing so would produce a glut of more laborers (thereby disempowering individual workers) to fuel the economy. These moves ignore a trend of economic growth in highly developed places like Japan, despite falling population.
Their cash-for-babiesscheme, like other child tax credit and pronatalist schemes in general, ignore child welfare. How does encouraging people to have more children ensure that each child will be born in anything approaching optimal conditions? Even with an increased tax credit, more kids inherently means less investment in each child. The average cost per child is about $230,000, which is in no way countered by an increase in the tax credit.
Their proposal ignores every child’s right to a fair start in life, which is increasingly important to ensure in a world where one percent of the population owns half the wealth. How do pittance tax credits, which treat families like isolated units, close the gap, massive in some cases, between rich kids and poor kids? Don’t all kids deserve the healthcare, education, and nutrition Trump’s kids got? Why wouldn’t they?
Their proposal is correct to focus on family planning, but makes a crucial mistake. Instead of growing an economy and intensifying inequality, we need to build democracy. And that means ensuring the intergenerational coming together of free and equal people, through the decentralizing of power, diffusing it instead among future citizens though a family planning system that builds democratic communities where each person belongs and has a voice.
The fundamental problem with child tax credits and similar pronatalist schemes is that they divorce the decision to have a baby, the creation of a need, from the resources required to fulfill that need, or the physical and emotional means each child deserves. Human history has shown we get the best results by being proactive and planning ahead, not ignoring needs until they fall in our lap. By raising the conditions of entry for all children, we will continue to reduce family size, increase cooperation, and continue our greatest success in sustainable development, women’s empowerment, and environmental protection.
Instead of a cash-for-babies scheme, we need a child first and truly human-rights based Fair Start family planning system that incentivizes and also assists would-be parents to have children only in conditions that begin to ensure that child a fair start in life, relative to other kids in their generation. We need to continue the progressive evolution of family planning systems (which have failed to account for things like climate change, inequality, the erosion of democracy, etc.) by now linking them to what kids need, before those kids are born. Family planning determines who we will be in the future, and must further the fundamental values of child welfare, fairness, nature and democracy.
What would child-first Fair Start family planning look like? Recently, Republicans moved to modify tax-advantaged “529” educational savings accounts to allow fetuses to become beneficiaries. Instead, why not work with states to fully fund those accounts for prospective parents and children, including college tuition, through progressively scaled contributions that also require some cooperative and progressively scaled contribution from parents, before they have kids? Doing so would mean a future world filled with happy and healthy children, equal opportunities for all, smaller and more connected communities, and functional democracies in a healthier environment.
Please contact President Trump and your representatives and senators today. Please politely tell them to drop the cash-for-babies schemes in favor of proactive, child-first and fair start family planning that incentivizes better and cooperative family planning to give every child a fair start in life.
We need better family planning, not a cash-for-babies scheme.
Their proposal ignores child welfare. How does encouraging people to have more children ensure that each child will be born in optimal conditions?
Their proposal ignores every child’s right to a fair start in life. Don’t all kids deserve the healthcare, education, and nutrition Trump and Rubio’s kids are getting? Don’t you and your kids deserve help getting to that fair start in life?
Their proposal is straight climate change denial. It would further destroy the polluted and collapsing natural environment our kids are inheriting. Why are Trump and Rubio ignoring the clear evidence that larger families have the worst impact on our climate, oceans, other species, etc? Why are they ignoring the way massive overcrowding is destroying our quality of life?
Instead of Trump and Rubio’s plan to overcrowd America, we want a Fair Start proposal that encourages better family planning: Parents waiting until they are ready to be great parents, having fewer children and investing more in each child, and getting the resources they need to to give every child a fair start in life through a fair division of this country’s wealth.
Take Action Now
Contact your Representative and ask them for this simple and better plan: We want tax reform that incentivizes better family planning aimed at giving every child their right to a fair start in life through smaller and more equitable families, not a scheme to create more consumers, workers, and taxpayers for Rubio, Trump, and their corporate sponsors.
Most people, even those deeply opposed to President Trump, probably think his plan to expand the child tax credit is a good thing. However, this proposal – long pushed by the religious right – is not so simple. Instead, it has to be viewed within the wider context, including the fact that Republicans are blocking access to family planning and playing politics with children’s health by delaying funding for the Child Health Insurance Program for some nine million needy kids.
The idea of expanding the child tax credit – the $1000 the government cuts off your taxes for every kid you have – is not new. Increasing that credit been called for by many, perhaps most notoriously Ivanka Trump and Marco Rubio, as another cash incentive meant toencourage certain Americans to have more kids. The credit tries nudge people to reverse a progressive fertility decline in some populations. This decline has been perhaps the greatest success of the last half-century’s concerted efforts around the world for sustainable development, women’s empowerment, and environmental protection.
Beyond attempting to undermine women’s empowerment, environmental protection, and sustainable development, this new tax proposal has many other significant problems.
Pushing families to have more kids is also the worst way to exacerbate climate change. Increasing the tax credit to encourage larger families should really be seen as an extreme form of climate change denial. Of course, this hurts an untold number of children in the long run.
But the tax-credit is also a perfect example of how all of us – Republicans and Democrats alike – claim we care about children but fail to actually help them. Through the child-tax credit, our government is equating a “child” with a few extra dollars for the parent. This divorces the decision to have a baby from the real needs of that helpless and defenseless individual, and all the many physical and emotional resources each child deserves to have. None of those needs can be addressed by simply tossing parents a few more dollars.
If we really cared about children, we wouldn’t propose minor tax credits in order to disguise massive giveaways to the rich and corporations. We wouldn’t, in a country where half of pregnancies are unplanned, be denying women access to family planning bothdomestically andabroad, or denying health insurance to our most at-risk children. This is what Trump’s tax and budget proposals add up to: Women being prodded to produce more children while society provides fewer resources and programs to care for those children. This creates a pool of resentful future workers with lower education and fewer opportunities – a permanent underclass whose only purpose is to prop up a system built on maximizing profits for the wealthy.
We need a way to actually help kids, one that recognizes the vital importance of early childhood conditions. Preparation, planning, foresight, and collaboration are how we can truly care about the next child born.
We know how this would look: Smaller families making up integrated, cooperative communities that properly fund and support the vital array of resources – healthcare, education, environmental – every child needs to get a fair start in life.
We could do so much better. If we look at our nation’s founding documents, we all have a fundamental birthright to equal opportunities in life. Instead of tax credits, we need incentives for parents and communities to work together to plan a fair start in life for every child.
It’s time for a fundamental change in how we care for children. It’s time for Congress to be proactive, not reactive, and help every child have a fair start.
Please contact your representatives and senators. Please politely tell them to develop a plan that incentivizes parents and communities to work together to plan a fair start in life for every child.
On the heels of announcements that Prince William and Kate Middleton are having a third child, another couple – Los Angelinos Mickey and Tricia Bhotiwihok – are setting a different example. Instead of putting money into their children, they are giving thousands to help other children.
Like Having Kids’ other Featured Families, Mickey and Tricia chose a smaller family. That decision also allows Mickey and Tricia to act on their altruistic natures and help other families.
To show just how powerful this approach to family planning is, Having Kids gave Mickey and Tricia a big choice: we sent them three thousand dollars that had been allocated for this purpose. The Bhotiwihoks could choose to apply this money to their family. Or they could donate the money. It was up to them.
Mickey and Tricia chose to donate all three thousand dollars to Project Healthy Children,a Givewell.org standout charity working on fortifying food for kids in the developed world.
They knew that the best way to ensure everyone’s kids live in a cleaner and safer world is to choose a smaller family and help other families do better too.
Mickey and Tricia’s Statement “Before discovering Having Kids’ Fair Start Model, we did not know there were other ways to approach family planning. Instead, we relied on generational, social, and cultural norms passed down to us. After considerable thought, we adopted the Fair Start Model, because it just made sense. We are a family of four in which both parents work. Like all parents, we want the best for our children. We are also thinking of the big picture. The Fair Start Model provides an indispensable tool for families and children. Participation in the Fair Start Model demonstrates our commitment to a brighter world for all children.”
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[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]We reiterate our well wishes to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the announcement of theirthird child.
This shouldn’t be that hard to understand: all of us at Having Kids simply want the best for all children. Not everyone will choose to switch from traditional models of family planning to the Fair Start model.
But we also need to recognize what it means when we reinforce the old model – either by our example, by our argument, or by our silence.
The Having Kids Fair Start model prioritizes children getting a fair start in life. That’s right – the children of poor families in the United Kingdom deserve the same level of nutrition, health care, and education as Prince William and Kate’s third child. This should be their birthright – and ignoring in the past ithas helped create the fatal chasm between rich and poor today.
The Independent notes: “While you celebrate the third royal baby, remember all of the women in Britain who aren’t allowed a third child: It’s an unhappy coincidence that the announcement of a third royal baby comes in the same year the Government deems third babies a luxury not every family has earned.” It is a great insight into the disparities built into our current society – the Royals set an example that the rest of us can’t afford to follow.
And for all those who try to follow the Royal example, who will pay for the third children?
If family planning stays a free-for-all, with the broader society expected to pay for every child, we will continue to have an unsolvable problem. This illustrates the problem with our current privatized family planning model: it creates a domino effect of larger families imitating one another, leading to more needy kids without the resources for their own children. This continues the cycle, and brings with it rising social and environmental costs.
It is a Sophie’s choice: Parents choose to have more kids, and society either pays the costs, or kids end up paying by not getting what they need and deserve.
Our short-sighted approach to family planning has broader implications as well.
Many of you were startled to see our discussion of William and Kate appear next to oursurvey regarding parents who abused their child with a stun gun and forced him/her to eat dog feces. The Royal discussion was also alongside our blog about limiting the right of members of Boko Haram to have kids after these parents offered up children to be usedas child bombs.
What is the connection? All this follows from the old, subjective family planning model of personal and private choice.
Focusing only on the “rights” of parents is the argument lawyers use to make sure anyone can have more kids – no matter how the children suffer. Many of us implicitly endorse this view. After all, if the Royal family’s family planning is none of anyone’s business, then other parents’ decision making is also none of anyone’s business.
If we put parents’ rights ahead of the rights of future kids, we get horrible abuse and child bombs, and no logical way to say anything against these outcomes.
By Bdm25 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51036438
There is no doubt that if the average parent plans smaller families, where we work together to ensure every child gets a fair start in life, you and your kids’ future will be less crowded, cleaner, and safer. If we continue on our current path, we get the opposite.
Who would knowingly choose to subject their kids to a hotter, more crowded, more polluted, and more dangerous world?
How can the future of the world not be our business? Don’t we have a right and the duty to make the future better for our kids? The only way we can improve our future – and everyone else’s – is if family planning becomes a topic we can all discuss honestly.
The solution is a child-first family planning model – an approach that balances all the values at stake in family planning. Let’s switch to that, and step out of the horrible cycle we’ve created for so many children.
Please be a part of this work today atHavingKids.org[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
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Addressing the Trump administration’s assault on efforts to prevent teenage pregnancy, the New York Timescommentary demolishes the administration’s stated rationales. But Trump and team’s underlying motivation is also suspect, and goes beyond any religious objections to contraception.
In the short-term, the economic elite might subvert democracy by subverting the press. How would they do it in the long-term? Various theorists might have noted that higher teen pregnancy rates translate into more consumers with less education. Over time, a less educated populace provides cheaper labor, higher profits, and a more easily manipulated electorate.
The 1% don’t benefit from a smaller and better-educated populace.
Babies are big business, with advertisers exploiting the appeal of infancy and motherhood to sell more and more products. If the economic elite can subjugate young women and force them to spend more at the same time, it’s a double windfall.
Like the European monarchs and oligarchs of old, Trump and his big consumptive family embody an unevolved and unsustainable model of domination and proliferation. Their example is harmful environmentally, socially, and politically.
How do we get rid of it? We can lead by example witha better model that says “I actually give a damn about children, equality, other species, and the future. I’m not just in this for myself and the narcissism of my bloodline.”
Want change? Change people. To do that, we need to start before the very beginning of life. Let’s make a Fair Start the very core of our thinking.
But we also drew threats of violence, racist and eugenicist rants about why white and wealthy couples should have lots of kids, and climate change denying bloggers who seem creepily obsessed with celebrity babies (and who use news of them to sell their advertisers’ products). We also heard fromTrump supporters who never questioned the possibility that replacement fertility is not a great a baseline. They think that even though family planning will define our futures and the futures of our children, it is “nobody’s business.”
It is clear that many people are simply in denial that the “nobody’s business” approach to (not) planning our families is exacerbating climate change and endangering our own children. They are also turning a blind eye to the immorality of some kids being born with everything and some kids nothing.
And they are also ignoring one simple fact: Caring and thoughtful parents are not going to stand by and ignore the fact that better family planning is quite possibly the single best way to mitigate climate change. These more responsible parents are not going to sit back and enjoy the last of nature while condemning their kids to a denuded, dangerous, crowded, and overheated world simply because people likethe Duggar family get famous by having kids.
These more responsible families are speaking out and moving us towards better family planning. They are not waiting for the government. As these families set this positive and life-affirming example, Having Kids will help their voices grow in number and strength.
Asking public figures to lead by example is one way to take action. We are moving beyond the Royals, asking other figures to speak out in favor of smaller families working together to plan a fair start in life for every child. Please be a part of this work!
