Let’s Strengthen Biden’s Child Care Policy to Unite America

Helping families generally finds bipartisan support. And President Joe Biden has put forth a massive child care and tax proposal to keep child care centers open, help low-income families with child care, and offer tax relief on the cost of having kids. These are great moves.

But like far too many efforts, this proposal is more reactive than proactive.

Without sustainable and equitable early childhood investments, the rest of us pay to prop up a losing proposition for American families. Continuing with business as usual pushes our current problems, from inequality to the climate crisis, onto future generations. How could Biden’s proposal be better? It could:

1) Cut all benefits to wealthy families who don’t need the funding. 

2) Use those savings as cash incentives to power up family planning and early childhood investment systems in the United States to 

a) target child abuse by amending the federal child abuse law, 

b) incentivize delaying having kids until parents are really ready, and 

c) promote environmentally just families for all regardless of income, ensuring resource availability for all, including future generations. Those changes – made as part of recognizing our sacred constitutional right to nature –  would create massive long-run savings and catalyze sustainable development. We could start to give all kids a Fair Start in life.

Cory Booker has already proposed a vehicle – baby bonds – through which the modernizing changes could be accomplished, and a Missouri House committee just voted to invest more in incentivizing fostering and adoption.  

Opponents to these changes will want to use Joe’s plan to incentivize unsustainable population growth, and use babies to grow the economy. Names like Ivanka Trump, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and growth-minded people at Vox like Matthew Yglesias want to use child care, and especially child tax credits, as incentives for women to have kids to reverse falling birth rates. That’s short-sighted, and ignores every child’s right to a socially and ecologically #fairstart in life.

Changing the way we plan for and invest in families – doing it in a socially and ecologically sustainable way – is thinking ahead and creating long run change. The impacts would be ten to twenty times other things we could do to address the climate, inequity, and decline of democracy crises. Better family planning also has a massive impact on pandemics, improving our response and reducing risks. It’s time to raise the baseline for conditions at birth to set kids up for success for life and build a better future by recognizing the obligations of those at the top. That’s how we come together – or deliberately include future generations in democratic communities – and truly unite America around a common core. We rebuild Main Street by creating a middle class through future generations, at cost to Wall Street and through the elimination of poor and unsustainable family planning.

In this way we can proceed from fundamental values, and achieve the personal autonomy the political right values, by applying the equity the political left values – but specifically prioritizing children. We can take power away from big business and big government, the entities the left and right respectively oppose, and invest it in future generations. Learn more here.

That’s truly uniting.

The Having Kids Unite America campaign is not simply a Green New Deal – it’s a Real Deal, or a new and intergenerational social contract to ensure a #fairstart in life for all kids.

TAKE ACTION: Add your name to urge President Biden to improve the child care rescue package. And share the campaign with hashtag #UniteAmericaforkids

In response to a recent article on the struggle for creating meaningful animal rights through family reforms, one anonymous mother is choosing to speak out

The issue of population ethics is very fraught, and for good reason. Things can go badly when government interferes with the bond between parents and children, especially when the government is placed in the role of controlling whether people have children or keep their children–even worse when it’s some government entity that’s deciding what makes “good” or “deserving” parenting. No parent or child – or even hypothetical child – wants the parent-child bond threatened in any way, even as much as we all agree that it’s a necessary pseudo-parental role the state must take on when a child must be protected from abuse or neglect.

The problem is that we are facing a reality where the value of life and the hope for any given new life is rapidly diminishing. And for some new life, there is no hope at all – for example, male chicks born into the egg industry struggle to emerge from their eggs and live barely long enough for their feathers to dry before they are ground up alive. For most of us, the picture is not that dark, but we operate in a society where hope is an increasingly rare commodity and distributed in a dramatically unequal way. We are all only different from those chicks as a matter of degree, not kind.

The root cause of this is devaluation of life. We have not done enough to protect life or enable an environment to support it. Fair Start’s core thesis seems to be that this is because we are unable to see or rationally reckon with the creation of life as the starting point in our thinking about justice and fairness, and because of this, our – in fact all life’s – existential value and hope for survival is threatened. To me the essence is this: there is a point at which population – especially high-resource-consuming human population – becomes so large that it lessens the value of life. It lessens the value of the individual as well as the family, and increases conflicts over the right to life between and within species.

I can’t say where that line is or whether we have yet crossed it, but I think it would go against the laws of basic ecology and physics to say that line does not exist. What that means is that we have to find a way to responsibly bring this issue into the conversation, preserving the value of life and the protective bond between parents and children. This includes our role as parents in the metaphorical sense that all of us are guardians of society and protectors of future life, and our metaphorical role as children in the sense that we are all vulnerable and trading in the increasingly scarce resource of hope.

There are a number of routes to addressing this, some of which would be counterproductive or come with an untenable cost to the very values this relies upon – autonomy, valuation of life, the parent-child bond and protection, and hope. But this is exactly why we have to reckon with the issue, responsibly and thoughtfully, since leaving it out of the important conversations of how to repair and build the world we need to support life comes with an even bigger cost. It’s not just badly conceived and destructive remedies to this issue that we risk when we marginalize this topic, but a threat to the ability for any species to survive, including our own.

Mwesigye Robert and the youth he works with at Rejoice Africa Foundation, an organization fully certified by the Government of Uganda, are on a mission. They understand that change happens bottom up, by maximizing ecosocial investment in each child. And unlike many organizations that ignore the role of family planning reforms, they support the idea that family planning should be just and sustainable, with redistribution of wealth to ensure every child an ecosocial fair start in life.

Embracing that as the first and overriding human right has the greatest impact in moving us towards sustainable development goals.

Mwesigye Robert had this to say about some of their work:

I and my organization managed to do a sanitation and hygiene project plot in our local communities in Uganda . We aimed to end plastic pollution, and supplement scarce drinking water supplies, and provide reproductive hygiene for girls in schools .  We constructed one rain water reservoir tank using plastic bottles collected by school children from the communities. Improving girls’ reproductive hygiene can help girls to grow well without reproductive health diseases, while ending plastic pollution ensures a healthy environment for girls while also helping to heal land degradation and reducing breeding areas for malaria-bearing mosquitos. These can be important in the fight for children to get an ecosocial fair start in life.

Here are a few photos of the project:

At Fair Start we envision a world of truly democratic communities surrounded by nature. They are constituted of free and equal people, each person has a meaningful role in making the rules under which they live, and each was empowered by the conditions in which they were born and raised.

That is what true freedom and legitimate governance  – for all – looks like. That vision reflects our most fundamental and objective values: Wellbeing, Equity, Nature, Democracy, and Improving Continuity. That vision can only be achieved by changing the way we plan families, and by constituting future generations around a Fair Start first principle, or grundnorm, of relative self-determination. We may liberate those in this vision, the free entities of the future, from the tyranny of prior generations by all means effective.

Take action:

Urge Natalia Kanem, head of the UNFPA, @Atayeshe as well as the Partners in Population and Development (PPD) to embrace Fair Start as the first and overriding human right, and the basis for all family planning policy. Contact PPD at: CONTACT SECRETARIAT | PPD (partners-popdev.org)

Fair Start supports Rejoice’s efforts, part of which will include pilot Fair Start programming:

To give:

Fundraising for Reforesting and Upping children’s voices in Uganda

Funds needed: $25000USD

Rejoice Africa is a youth led organization , community based organization operating in the republic of Uganda . It was founded in 2017 by 25 compassionate Youths  with the spirit to save the next generations . 

What we do ; 

1. Climate adaptation and mitigation through Reforestation , Afforestation , Agroforestry , ecosystem and climate awareness in schools .
2. Poverty alleviation through supporting bee keeping and Rabbit keeping.
3. Sanitation and hygiene through reproductive health , domestic hygiene and community hygiene.

Why Reforesting and Upping children’s voices in

South western Uganda is affected by harsh climate changes ( long term droughts in the year ) caused by human environmental destructive activities (cutting down trees for firewood , clearing land for Agriculture , charcoal burning ) which has affected food security and increased malnutrition cases in the region . People in south western Uganda are not well versed with skills of climate mitigation and adaptation .

Activities. 

1; planting 1000000 tree seedlings of eucalyptus , pines , mangoes and avocados on the bare lands of the registered smallholders farmers .

2; climate education in schools to collect voiceses of school children and communities about climate changes and ways of restoration of climate changes . This will be achieved through climate songs, poems , storytelling and skits .

Need for donations of $25000USD 

1. We want to purchase 1000000 seedlings .
2. We want to purchase garden tools (hoes, watering cans , scissors )
3. Learning materials (flip-charts , fliers, burners , books )
4. Transport of the materials .
5. Continue amplifying children’s voices from school , community on the fair start in environmental friendly activities.
6. Construction of water tanks using plastic bottles from the community .
7. 30% of the raised funds will be used to do a plot project of Ecosocial in Uganda .

How your donation will be distributed .

30% of the funds will go to do a plot project of the Fair start Movement . 

35% reforesting project 

25% Upping the Children’s Voices 

10% administration .

And $25000USD is the budget for the whole year 2022(12 months )

WISE TRANSFER .

Sender/donor 

He/she needs to have WISE Transfer account , you can click on the following link : https://wise.com/invite/a/mwesigyer

After you click on send and follow the procedure . 

You can send the funds in your currency .

RECEIVER Address .

Name : Mwesigye Robert 

Country : Uganda 

Email: robertmwesigye1990@gmail.com

You will be able to see this profile account 👉

Thank you very much for the solidarity in supporting Rejoice in 2022.

Rejoice did climate event in schools as more information on the following link 🖇️ https://youtu.be/p0S11-2hgaw

Photos of the organization below:

Caring tree seedlings to the field .

Construction of water tank using plastic bottles from communities.

The above photos are school children.

How changing the rules for family planning and development will make all the difference

by Brixton Reyes

A Fair Start in the Philippines?

In the Philippines, family is a central and inviolable aspect of Filipino society. Most people’s lives revolve around their families, as is evident through various generations of family members living under the same household not wanting to be separated and through Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) remitting support to their parents and siblings. Despite the level of value Filipinos put on ‘family’, many children are still not given the same degree of importance. These children are victims of unfortunate circumstances from the moment they are born. In an article published by France’s Agency for Development, there are 250,000-1,000,000 homeless children living in the streets of the capital city of Manila.[1] In relation to this, thirty percent (30%) of Filipino children under 5 years old also suffer from stunting due to malnutrition which makes the Philippines one of the top countries in stunting prevalence.[2] Moreover, at least 17% of Filipino children aged 13-17 years old experienced sexual violence while growing up.[3] These are a few among the barrage of issues that plague today’s Filipino youth.

The same is the very reason I support the Fair Start Movement. A fair start for a Filipino child ensures that they will have a proper home they can live in that is conducive to their holistic development, adequate nutrition to fully develop their physical, mental, & emotional capacities, and safety from abuse and other forms of violence. It is imperative that the Fair Start Model should be included as one of the government’s core policy reforms. Children are referred to as “biyaya ng Diyos” (blessings of God) but our current laws & policies do not reflect this status. The Filipino family should not be an entity to which a child, even as he or she matures, is subservient.

A key feature of the Fair Start Model is that the right to have children is not a personal and private act within the parents’ exclusive domain. In the current model, which assumes this right belongs privately and exclusively to the parents, our local laws don’t have the same regulatory enforcement.  Compounded with the state’s neglect to provide for free accessible contraception and family planning services to its citizens, this situation allows children to be born to parents who are unprepared to care for them and their own rights are neglected from the start. This state of affairs is supported by different aspects of Philippine society such as religion, socio-cultural norms, and even online trends. Family planning should be child- centric rather than parent or family-centric. An effort to get out of this limbo is the submission of R.A. 10354 otherwise known as the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act or RPRH Law[4] whose implementation is currently not being prioritized. As an effect of this, despite the availability of safeguards, it still snowballs into unwanted pregnancies[5] and eventually, a growing population that ends up uncared for.

Because of this, I believe that adopting the Fair Start Model is a necessary public act. In doing so, the Philippines can pave the way for more countries to uphold intergenerational justice in the trying times ahead.

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[1] https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/breath-hope-street-children-philippines

[2] https://reliefweb.int/report/philippines/undernutrition-philippines-scale-scope-and-opportunities-nutrition-policy-and

[3]https://www.unicef.org/philippines/media/491/file/National%20Baseline%20Study%20on%20Violence%20Against%20Children%20in%20the%20Philippines:%20Results%20(executive%20summary).pdf

[4] Republic Act No. 1035

[5] https://pidswebs.pids.gov.ph/CDN/PUBLICATIONS/pidsdps2110.pdf

If you do a term search on Google for recent media regarding issues around human population growth, you will find that the vast majority of messaging tells us women are not having enough kids and that we are in a “baby bust.” In other words, we are not having enough children to satisfy the ever-present push to ensure the economic growth – and greater returns on investments – that comes with more people.

A counterargument goes something like this: Policies that allowed that growth to happen drove the climate crisis, enslaved women to expectations of motherhood, and ensured no minimum levels of welfare or equity for children. These are all bad things, and it’s not clear that returns on investments – which generally favor the rich – are worth the trade. Everyone loves free money, but the climate crisis is kind of a big deal, right?

But there is a bigger problem with pushing women to have kids for economic reasons. Assuming that how we see future children is how we see our societies, the universal media push (driven often by journalists’ advertisers) to grow our population means that we are essentially economic inputs and comprise economies, measurable in things like gross domestic product. That is who we are.

This ideology is very different from seeing ourselves as members of a democracy in which, rather than trying to maximize the number of bodies (as consumers, workers, and taxpayers) irrespective of political equity, we try to maximize the civic capacity and effective political voice of each citizen, requiring true equality of opportunity rather than a massive gap between rich and poor. We would be focused on a metric like our empowerment, rather than product.

And if being in a democracy is what obligates us to follow the rules, because in democracy we make those rules, then being in an economy – essentially, because of who we are – would mean we do not have to follow the rules, rules that protect the property of the rich for example. Robbed of our actual role in the process, and left to gape at politicians over which we each have little or no control, why should we? If governments have simply become adept at hiding violence, for the most part, and now mostly partner with private concentrations of wealth to more subtly use economic incentives to control the populace as some think is the case, as opposed to fulfilling their obligation to ensure the self-determination of people directly applying their will in functional town halls, why follow the rules? None of this would matter if getting to those town halls was impossible. It’s not, thanks to Fair Start and other reforms.

The “baby bust” messaging is scary for many reasons, but it may also be the key to solving many of our political crises today. If we are worried about democracy we should stop seeing kids as economic inputs and use family reforms like Fair Start to make sure children will be comprising – in terms of maximizing our investment in them, and their development via collective family planning – town halls rather than shopping malls. Then we are freed by the rules under which we live because they are our rules.

Take action: Urge President Biden to put democracy before economy, and free future generations.

Your Holiness,

We laud your many commitments to social justice and environmental protection. You are bending the arc of the world towards justice in a way few voices can.  And while you have been criticized for your recent comments regarding the need to parent rather than raise pets, we want to offer the Vatican a constructive challenge. 

The Vatican has roughly thirty-three billion dollars in net worth. Would you consider donating just one thousand dollars to fairstartmovement.org to support a fundamental policy reform that would make every child’s right to a Fair Start in life the first and overriding human right.

Nothing would speak out against selfishness more than that and give the majority of people – those who will exist in the future – that which they deserve. It’s not about population. People are not numbers. It’s about the impossibility of separating values like welfare, equity, and nature from their creation.

As Nobel Laureate Steven Chu noted, population growth has acted like a Ponzi scheme that has pulled massive wealth to the top of the economic pyramid at cost to women, children and the environment. It’s a fundamentally unjust and exploitative system. And the greatest impact in reversing it, and furthering the Sustainable Development Goals, comes though changing our family policies to promote an ecosocial Fair Start in life as the first and overriding human right. 

There is nothing else that comes close to having the impact, long term, on the social justice and environmental causes you support. Without an ecosocial Fair Start in life – with guaranteed minimum levels of welfare approaching equity for each child, the restoration of nature, and democracies where voices actually matter – there is no real justice. All forms justice remain downstream – missing the fundamental phase in which we create and most define power relations.

Fair Start changes that. It’s the biggest win-win of all. 

His Holiness speaking out for Fair Start and donating would start a trend, changing the ultimate form of selfishness – the concentration of wealth that could be used to save and improve countless lives – into the ultimate form of impact. Many young people stand ready to support such a trend of giving and planning, putting people and nature before profits and property, and treating Fair Start redistributions as a peremptory norm overriding governmental processes.

Fair Start is not about population. It’s about people, starting from the source, limiting and decentralizing power, and thus becoming the relatively self-determining – or free – people we deserve to be.

Will you speak out for real social justice that most effectively furthers the values you have espoused, by supporting all children getting a Fair Start in life? 

Ashley Berke, Nandita Bajaj, Carter Dillard

FairStartMovement.org 

FAIR START RESEARCH

• A clear link exists between rapid unsustainable growth and poverty. Better family planning increases economic prospects by allowing greater investment in each child.  
• According to the World Bank, in 2015, almost 2 billion people (26% of the world’s population) were living on less than $3.20 per day, and nearly half of the world (46%) was living on less than $5.50 a day. 
• The costs and benefits of overpopulation under globalization are now distributed by class more than by nation. Labor bears the cost of reduced wage income; capital enjoys the benefit of reduced wage costs. 
• The United State and much of the capitalist world believed that new bodies were needed to produce more labor. This pro-natal, pro-capital belief has created a world in which huge inequities exist. For example, the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, which is more than 60% of the planet’s population. 
• Family size affects those in developed countries as well as underdeveloped nations: In the U.S., the Kansas City Star reported that of more than 6,000 prisoners in 12 states, 1 in 4 was a product of the foster-care system; there is a foster-care-to-prison pipeline in many states. Foster children are also diagnosed with PTSD at a rate greater than Iraq War veterans, and every year, more than 4,000 former foster care kids end up homeless after leaving the system. Meanwhile, the number of American children in foster care increased 12% between 2012 and 2017. 
• Our current family planning systems provide no minimum standard of well-being for future children, allowing children to be born into failing state systems because their parents cannot care for them. That exacerbates inequity and ensures rich kids stay rich and poor kids stay poor. 
• Current pronatalist policies sow the seeds of nation destabilization by further increasing inequality.