Tucker Carlson has been on a rampage, calling Alexandra Ocasio Cortez a “moron” for raising the issue of family planning as a response to climate change. That tirade raises serious questions about Tucker’s values, questions he should answer:
1. Is he really denying that family planning, which has been shown to have the greatest impact in mitigating the threat of climate change, is off topic? Should we ignore effective solutions, even when the most credible sources view climate change as threat to national security?
2. Is he suggesting that we shouldn’t consider the wellbeing of future generations when coming up with family planning policies, and hold people to certain standards and responsibilities when becoming parents? Should others have to pay for irresponsible family planning and parenting?
3. How do we ensure functional democracies without ensuring better family planning, and the sort of responsible parenting that creates responsible citizens? Or does how we are raised, and who we become, not matter?
Urge Tucker @TuckerCarlson to leave the insults aside and defend American values. Urge him to answer these simple questions.
Our kids’ future will be defined by the people with whom they will share the world, the people being born and raised every day. Will our kids will live in a crowded world filled with billions of people who did not get what they needed growing up; a world of massive inequality and pollution? Or will they live in a safe, healthy, sustainable world, with equity and democracies where their voice matters? The world could go either way.
What environmentalists are doing to reduce consumption, child welfare activists are doing to protect kids alive today, and human rights activists are doing to universalize rights are all laudable. But what really matters – what has the greatest impact – is people, and how we make and shape them.
Studies have shown the media have a crucial influence over the way we will go. Recent eye-grabbing headlines from People magazine are not helping: “’Unprepared’ Kim Kardashian and Kanye West ‘Are Both Very Excited’ About Baby No. 4.” Really? Promoting large families as climate change and inequality worsen is a bad idea. Downplaying the idea of preparation makes it even worse. Ignoring the ways this uber-wealthy couple differ from most families that might follow their lead, makes the article simply irresponsible. Other news outlets are doing a better job of promoting a better future, showing more sustainable families sharing resources to invest more in every child.
Urge People Magazine to consider the impact it is having in limiting our kids future and driving an unjust future when reporting on celebs, and their family choices.
Senator Lee is suggesting that Americans arbitrarily have larger families. He is actually promoting exacerbating climate change, and all the risks of a larger human population in a less hospitable future environment. Having a larger family is the most effective way to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Given that climate change is a threat to the security of the United States, we are wondering who – exactly – Sen. Lee represents?
Elizabeth Warren is right to focus on the need to improve child care throughout the United States. Vox knows this. But quality child care, and the sufficient development of children to ensure real democracy in the future, depends on both supply and demand. Any policy changes should be geared toward strengthening family planning and bringing kids into better conditions, as well as improving the overall conditions. Warren should distinguish herself from Ivanka Trump, who like her father, also supports child care, but because it is a way of maintaining the growth-based Ponzi scheme of creating profits for investors by creating more people.
Warren should embrace a policy of smaller families sharing resources to invest more in every child. That’s the best way to protect our most vulnerable entities, mitigate climate change, and ensure an ecologically and socially sustainable future.
Will Vox help? Tweet Lauren Williams at @laurenwilliams and ask her to publicize the difference between growth-based and child-centered child care policies, and call for the latter.
Georgia state representative Ed Setzler said he is moving to virtually eliminate the ability to terminate pregnancy. The bill, supported solely by male lawmakers, would force women to parent against their will and force children into the world with parents who are not ready or able to provide for them.
Contact Rep. Seltzer at (404) 656-7857 and ask how he plans to ensure that the children who would be born because of his policies receive a fair start in life? Will they get the privileges his four kids are getting? Why not?
What would you do to protect future kids against manifest threats like Ed?
Stand up and confront those who threaten our future. It’s time to put children’s needs first and ensure a fair start in life – it is a human right.
This week marks the beginning of Florida’s 2019 Legislative Session. Legislators have until May 3 – just 60 days – to consider thousands of bills and decide on what issues are most important to Floridians. Having Kids applauds Florida Senator Lauren Book for her commitment to protecting Florida’s children from abuse and rehabilitating those who have suffered through legislative efforts and her work with Lauren’s Kids.
Most recently, Senator Book introduced Senate Bill (“SB”) 90. This bill would establish “early childhood court programs” to “serve the needs of infants and toddlers in dependency court.” Dependency courts hear cases about children who are abused or neglected, and, in Florida, this number is staggering. In 2016 alone, nearly 42,000 children were abused or neglected in the
State of Florida (and these are just reported cases). (We also recently asked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to develop policies, and encourage legislation, that enables judges to issue Fair Start Orders. Read our letter to him here.)
SB 90 would serve a tremendously important need – to have the justice system work to “restructure the way the community responds to the needs of maltreated children” through having court systems that employ a multidisciplinary approach to help heal maltreated children (both mentally and physically) and implements steps to ensure the rebuilding of the child-parent relationship.
Having Kids commends Senator Book for introducing legislation that puts the needs of children and their well-being as a top priority. However, we encourage Senator Book to take her important bill one step farther and include Fair Start Order language as an additional part of this bill. Such legislation would allow judges, in cases of truly egregious child abuse, to issue non-coercive orders preventing abusive and neglectful parents from having additional children for limited time periods like during the period of probation. These orders, in the context of early childhood court programs, would allow parents and their healing children to focus on necessary rehabilitative steps to repair the child-parent relationship and protect future children. Shouldn’t we work to prevent abuse rather than simply react to it? Fair Start orders do just that.
If you live in Florida, please call or send a brief message to Senator Book thanking her for her tireless work on behalf of children and asking her to consider adding Fair Start Order language to SB 90. Reach her at book.lauren@flsenate.gov
or (850) 487-5032.
Is it fair to put the burden of dealing with the fallout of her reckless behavior on her kids, as she suggests?
We all love our kids. We want the best for them. We have an obligation to ensure a future world that is safe and secure for them, filled with people who were born and raised with everything they need to work together for a better world. We should confront people that threaten our children and their future by promoting irresponsible and unsustainable family planning. We should not let the future for our kids be defined by people like Rachel Campos-Duffy.
Take action:
Tweet Rachel @RCamposDuffy, and ask her to answer these simple questions: Do all kids deserve a fair start in life and how would you ensure that? Is having eight kids sustainable? What steps are you taking to make the future world safe and secure for you own kids?
Rachel is impacting the world we all share, and the future our kids will inherit. Help hold her accountable and urge her to engage on and debate the issues she raised.
Ivanka Trumpand her three kids were all born wealthy, with privileges in life they did not earn, and a massive head start over people who will never be able to catch up. She and her kids enjoy such advantage in part, because of the tax, family planning and economic policies that enable the rich to become richer while the middle class shrinks.
Meanwhile, Ivanka and her husband personally lobbied to reducing access to abortion. More importantly, as the President’s Senior Advisor, she had a hand in the sweeping and harmful Title X changes. The changes implemented in February shifted federal funding from organizations that provide birth control, STD screenings and preventative health exams to faith-based and pregnancy crisis centers and abstinence only education.
Results of access to long-acting reversible contraceptive in Colorado. Photo: LARC4CO
The ability to control the timing and number of children is one of the most critical factors in determining a woman’s empowerment, independence and success. Research indicates that women who delay motherhood and have smaller families are significantly better off economically than their peers who started families at the average age. Smaller families tend to result in a more equal distribution of parental responsibility. Women who have fewer children also tend to have greater decision making power in the household, and are less likely to be drowned out by a spouse or relatives.
“I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get, so I think this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want.”
That increase would raise their standard of living and ability for mothers to give kids a fair start. People like her – who live on investments rather than hard work,rely on a future underclass of workers to support her and her family.They feed off the growth that poor family planning creates.
Photo: LARC4CO
But there are efforts to counter these regressive policies. Having Kids is part of a coalition of groups in Colorado, LARC4CO, that are pushing for affordable access to effective contraception and other reproductive health services for all women. We just re-upped. Read two key fact sheets about the coalition’s work hereandhere.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Ivanka to act like the champion for women she claimed to be and advocate for universal access to family planning services to empower women and give every child a fair start in life. Tweet her at @IvankaTrump.
Presidential Candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren recently unveiled a plan for Universal Child Care and Early Learning. The proposal would shift resources from the mega-wealthy to fund the effort. But some have asked if it would encourage people to have more kids.
Warren is one of the leading economic experts in our country. Surely, she is aware of the depth and effects of inequality as it relates to families and kids. Unsustainable and poor family planning is worst way to exacerbate climate change and inequality.
The Universal Child Care and Early Learning Proposal would benefit millions of kids and help give them a fair start in life. But we can avoid the potential for free child care to incentivize poor family planning. With this in mind, we wrote to her with a suggestion for improving her Universal Child Care and Early Learning Proposal.
We suggest an addition that ties universal child care and early learning to new parent education about the benefits of smaller families.
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In a 2.0 version of Sen. Warren’s plan, new-parent education could be required in order to enroll for free child care. This would create a long-term planning approach for family planning in the U.S. Encouraging smaller, well planned families addresses, rather than exacerbates, the greatest threats facing the country – the degradation of our social and natural environment through things like inequality and climate change.
We can break down the barrier between family planning and child welfare, aligning need with resource, as outlined by the Fair Start Model. Sen. Warren’s proposal would shift resources to give kids a fair start in life. Why not take it a step further by planning for our future?
Better child care should be meant to help kids, not simply enable parents to afford larger families. To help kids effectively, we have to aim to protect future kids, because we get the best results when we all plan well ahead.
