Fair Start Movement

Category: Children’s Rights

  • Real Climate Action Means Promoting Smaller Families

    Real Climate Action Means Promoting Smaller Families

    We applaud candidates like Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke for presenting ambitious climate plans. Gov. Inslee has proposed a transition to 100% renewable energy. Rep. O’Rourke proposes net zero emissions by 2050 along with trillions in new investments.

    Yes, these are important steps in mitigating the climate crisis. What’s missing though? Like other proposals coming forward by 2020 candidates, they are forgetting to start at the source of the problem. The fact is, anthropogenic climate impact starts with people. Is it time to change who we are, and will be?  

    A policy of promoting smaller families that share resources to plan a fair start in life for every child is the most effective way to reduce our impact.

    We urge the 2020 candidates to consider policies that would promote smaller and more equitable families. Not only is that the best way to reduce a variety of harmful emissions, but it reduces other anthropogenic effects. And (perhaps most importantly), it creates a population – in quantity and of a resilient quality – that can still thrive in a degraded future environment. No other change is as fundamental, interpersonal or effective.

    Better family planning is the most effective solution to the greatest threats that face us and our children. What can we do?

    • Speak out: Break the taboo against talking about the need for better family planning policies. Talk to the organizations you support, to parents, and people considering becoming parents about the facts about climate impact. It’s your future too. Empower yourself and change the world around you.
    • Put direct pressure on wealthy people and corporations to fund Fair Start family planning: Children are the future, and every kid deserves a fair start in life. Wealthy politicians – who have to defend themselves in public – should be able to explain themselves on this issue. What standard of living do they provide their own kids? Other children don’t deserve the same? Why not?

    Less than most effective is not an option. Speak out, and put pressure on politicians to include better family planning reforms in their climate change proposals.

  • Measles: How to Think About Disease Transmission

    Measles: How to Think About Disease Transmission

    Our brains are more apt to deal with obvious and immediate threats, like a nation’s military standing ready for invasion, than potentially more dangerous threats like the transmission of infectious diseases. One example of this is how we miss the clear role of poor family planning-driven population growth in the spread of diseases.

    This is true whether in the case of measles, the yearly flu epidemic, or others cases like the Zika virus and Ebola. As we become a more crowded planet – with 11 billion of us projected by the end of the century, the risk of disease outbreaks intensifies. “Increased population densities and unhealthy living conditions in urban slums can ease the transmission of infections,” as Population Action International stated.

    Add to that, the connectedness of our world which allows for a near-instant global spread of infectious diseases. As author and professor, Lewis Dartnell from the University of Westminster warned, “…the modern world of densely-packed cities and intercontinental airplanes provide the perfect conditions for new diseases to spread to huge numbers of people before any sort of effective quarantine could be implemented. Even if perhaps only 20% of the global population became sick at the same time, enough vital services and infrastructure could grind to a halt that our whole technological, deeply-interlinked, civilisation could collapse.”

    Here’s a challenge: Scan the dozens of news stories each day about the new measles epidemic and look for any reporters who connect the issue to crowding or need for family planning. It’s as if there is no connection between the growth of population and spread of disease.

    Ignoring the role of crowding in the things that happen around you is threat to you, your kids, and your future. Family planning defines the world around us. We can do better. Start at the source. Learn more here.

  • Japan’s Population Decline, Good or Bad? It Depends on Your Values

    Japan’s Population Decline, Good or Bad? It Depends on Your Values

    Why would the usually thoughtful New York Times, which seems to appreciate the dangers of climate change and other environmental crises, publish an article lamenting Japan’s population decline?

    “Like Japan itself, the imperial family has a demographic problem. Just as Japan’s population is shrinking and aging, so is the royal family’s.”

    Isn’t falling fertility the most effective way to mitigate the harms of climate change, and do other good things, like improve child welfare and increase each person’s share of their democracy? Why would the NYT not even mention the upside?

    Here’s the problem. Even though we may value those things, we have a moral blind spot when it comes to family planning. We assume that because we grew up in ever expanding nation-states with constant economic growth, that way must continue.

    Let’s follow one Nobel Laureate’s advice, drop that assumption, and find a better way. Learn more about the Fair Start family planning model here. 

  • Murder of AJ Fruend: Time to Get Serious About Preventing Child Abuse?

    Murder of AJ Fruend: Time to Get Serious About Preventing Child Abuse?

    AJ Freund, the five year old, allegedly killed by kids parents is just one of the nearly 5 children who die each day in the U.S. due to abuse and neglect. Despite over well over a century of public policy interventions to stop the abuse, almost 700,000 children in the U.S. are abused each year.

    Is it time to get serious about preventing child abuse, rather than responding after the harm has occurred? We know that some people are not ready to become parents. Yet, we stand by and wait for a problem before we act. The truth is that some people – like AJ’s parents – are just not ready. How do we identify parents that might not be ready? Convictions for prior abuse and neglect are a good start. Having Kids has developed model legislation designed to break the myth that everyone is ready to be a parent, and to target child abuse before it begins.

    Contact the Governor of Illinois, where AJ died, at 312-814-2121 and ask him to consider calling for Fair Start legislation. You can also start at the top, and urge the United Nations Secretary General to speak out on the need for a universal Fair Start family planning system. It’s time to get serious about preventing child abuse.

  • D.C.: Boost Child Welfare With Guaranteed Minimum Income Tied to Family Planning

    D.C.: Boost Child Welfare With Guaranteed Minimum Income Tied to Family Planning

    On the heels of reports of significant problems inside DC’s child welfare system, and a dangerous shortage of foster parents available in the District, Having Kids is calling for a novel approach to addressing child-welfare. Cory Booker and many others who have proposed “baby bonds” and similar measures to give poor kids the money they need. Having Kids takes that idea a step further, calling on DC to adopt a sustainable guaranteed income for children in the city pegged to better family planning.

    Read the full letter here.

    The idea is simple: The District can reach many of its goals at once by promoting smaller families so that communities and families can invest more in each child. The policy is centered around every child’s right to a fair start in life, and is designed to address the greatest threats facing the District and nation, including inequality and climate change. Can Washington D.C. make a difference by itself? It can for its residents. But it can also lead by example and set a trend – a line of dominoes – for the rest of the nation with the most effective and sustainable path forward.

    The policy urges the District to adopt a stable community model, where the financial resources formerly required to support growth could be directed to other beneficial investments. Rather than focusing on unsustainable economic growth that excludes the most vulnerable citizens from participating, the Having Kids GMI proposal shrinks the wealth gap by ensuring a level playing field from the beginning of life. Specifically, it contemplates (1) household resources per capita, (2) level of access to public services such as health and education, and (3) above all, the relationship between a child’s fair start in life and prospects for success.

    Here are the facts: The science of early childhood development shows the disproportionate impact our early years have on the rest of our lives. This holds true, among other things, for economic inequality. Better family planning is by far the best way to reduce inequality. According to Erika Mathews, Having Kids Executive Director, “other interventions are simply too late.”

    TAKE ACTION:
    Tweet D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, @MayorBowser and ask her to pursue GMI tied to family planning to improve child welfare.

  • Having Kids Urges TX Governor to Address Rampant Child Abuse

    Having Kids Urges TX Governor to Address Rampant Child Abuse

    An egregious case of child abuse in Texas made national headlines in February when authorities discovered two children held in a dog cage and two more malnourished and living in filth. While the parents’ case moves through the legal system, the national child-protection organization ​Having Kids​ is urging Governor Greg Abbott to take immediate action to stem the tide of child abuse in Texas. The organization sent a letter to Governor Abbott encouraging him to adopt a new and better approach to child welfare and family planning, beginning with Fair Start orders.

    Fair Start orders can be issued at a judge’s discretion, in the event of conviction and probation, to prevent a party from having children for a limited time period as a condition of probation. The state would not consider putting helpless children back into a convicted abuser’s care; the state should similarly consider the right of a child not to be born to a known abuser for a period of probationary time.

    We are offering to assist Governor Abbott and relevant Texas agencies in implementing new policies to prevent child abuse.

    Having Kids wants more for the children of Texas than the state’s after-the-fact reaction to such horrible abuse. Erika Mathews, Executive Director of  ​Having Kids​ says, “Texas is currently embroiled in a class action lawsuit regarding the failures of its foster care system, and the state regularly has more child abuse deaths than the national average. It’s time for the state to fulfill its obligations to present and future children by moving toward a human-rights based and child-first family planning policies.”

    The current model of family planning – which makes having and raising kids the exclusive business of the parents – ignores every child’s right to a minimum standard of wellbeing not only at birth, but throughout childhood. The parent-centered family planning and parenting paradigm is a violation of the rights of children to be protected. Instead, Texas must move toward the Fair Start model, which will benefit children and the state. Fair Start orders are a first step.

  • Voices Are Speaking Out Against Irresponsible Family Planning. Will you?

    Voices Are Speaking Out Against Irresponsible Family Planning. Will you?

    Senator Mike Lee made headlines recently by pushing women to randomly have more kids. It’s the worst way to exacerbate the intricately related social and ecological threats facing our nation.  People are speaking out against him. One brilliant voice was featured by the Salt Lake Tribune this week.

    Read the full letter here. 

    Why is it important to speak out against irresponsible family planning? Other peoples’ family planning decisions will determine our future. Those decisions will define the quality of our kids’ lives, and our own. With whom do you want your kids to share this world? What do you want the future to look like? It’s time for a family planning policies that encourage people to wait until they are ready to be good parents, and to invest more in each child.

    Take Action:: Engage Mike Lee on these issues, in writing or in person, and we’ll publicize your efforts. Take the most effective action you can to protect the future. Promote better family planning policies now.

     

     

  • For Thoughtful Conservatives: Question Tucker Carlson on Family Planning

    For Thoughtful Conservatives: Question Tucker Carlson on Family Planning

    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.

  • Tabloid Baby Obsession: Harming the Future for Kids?

    Tabloid Baby Obsession: Harming the Future for Kids?

    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.

    Tweet People’s Executive Editor Kat Coyne @KatePeople and urge her to consider the Fair Start family planning model as a normative baseline when reporting on celebrity families.