Fair Start Movement

Category: Children’s Rights

  • Having Kids Calls on Pediatricians to Adopt Child First Family Planning Model

    Having Kids Calls on Pediatricians to Adopt Child First Family Planning Model

    In an open letter sent today, Having Kids is urging the American Academy of Pediatrics to consider a new policy statement on family planning.

    Read the full letter here. 

    A recently publicized study in the journal Pediatrics shows that children bear 88 percent of the burden of diseases linked to climate change, which could reverse the progress made over the past 25 years in reducing child mortality. That study follows the prescient policy statement on the need for effective global policy changes to mitigate the impact of climate change.

    Having Kids is asking the Academy to adopt and advocate for a new family planning model. Pediatricians can, and should, help lead the most important change to protect our future.

    “We stand ready to assist with the development of the Academy’s new policy on family planning,” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids.

    Take action: Tweet Dr. Kraft, head of the AAP, at @AAPPres, and politely ask her to consider our request.

  • Indiana Child Abuse: Take Action

    Indiana Child Abuse: Take Action

    Having Kids is petitioning Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, as well as state officials, to consider the possibility of an unusual order in the event an Indiana couple is convicted of child abuse or neglect.

    Read the full letter here. 

    In mid-April 2018, the Department of Child Service, in response to multiple anonymous phone calls, removed four children from a home in Greenfield, Indiana occupied by Christopher Smith and Chantelle Oliver.  According to court records, Smith allegedly engaged in regular physical and verbal abuse of the children including punching and slapping them, grabbed the children by the hair, and smacking them in the face. Per DCS records, the children were, at first, afraid to talk to investigators, fearing for their own safety.  One child stated that Smith once pushed her head into a wall, causing her nose to bleed. Smith was arrested and charged with multiple counts, including three felony counts of domestic battery on a person less than 14 years old. He has denied harming any of the children.

    Having Kids is urging state officials to consider a Fair Start court order, in the event of a conviction, temporarily prohibiting the couple from having additional children during the pendency of any probation in order to facilitate the couple’s rehabilitation and recovery, and also to prevent the neglect of any future children.

    “We waiting for kids to be abused, rather than preventing the abuse” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids. “It’s time to change the way we plan families” The model Fair Start order is noncoercive and seeks to strike a balance between the rights of parents and the needs of future children and the community.

    In 2016 alone, there were 28,430 victims of abuse or neglect in Indiana, an increase of 7.7% from 2015.[4]  Even more alarming, the number of fatalities as a result of child abuse and neglect more than doubled in Indiana in 2016 to 70 deaths (from 34 in 2015), making Indiana have the unfortunate distinction as the state with the highest percentage of increases in child-abuse-related deaths in the country.[5]  

    Take action: Tweet Gov. Holcomb at @GovHolcomb and politely ask him to consider our request.

  • Mother’s Day Love: Setting Moms Up To Succeed

    Mother’s Day Love: Setting Moms Up To Succeed

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    On a little known corner of the culture wars battleground, a struggle is being waged over an unusual subject: Motherhood.

    Worldwide, fertility rates and family sizes have dropped significantly as women have become more liberated. Through delayed motherhood and fewer children, many are taking more time to develop their own lives, as well as invest more time and resources in each child. In that sense it liberated and empowered us and our moms, creating significantly better child welfare and development outcomes. That trend includes an openness to parents of diverse sexual orientation, and nontraditional family planning like adoption and fostering. The trend also promises to be the best chance we have to respond to the looming threat of climate change, and in that sense represents something like a form of human evolution, a change moving us away from being as much of a threat to our own species.

    On the other side, there is a faction of interests that benefit from traditional family planning, where woman are culturally pressured into having kids, where that pressure points women towards larger families, where sustainable and massive families are role modeled as somehow a good thing, where elites like Trump and his ilk use higher fertility rates to produce cheap labor and lots of consumers while also exacerbating inequality, and where impacts on the environment are ignored. They float above the masses, buoyed up by growth-based inequality. And rather than seeing parenthood as an opportunity to empower and develop children, they see it as an opportunity for economic exploitation.

    This Mothers’ Day, if you want to really help moms and do more than just buy the obligatory card and flowers, consider getting involved in this struggle. Help moms succeed by making sure they get the resources they need to give their kids a fair start in life – one with opportunities equal to other (and wealthy) families in their community. Help them protect their kids’ future from things like climate change though a cooperative family planning model – the most effective way to mitigated the ecocide currently underway. Help them ensure their kids will inherit a world with greater economic equality, and functional democracies where their kids have a voice and power.

    Want to help moms? Follow us on https://www.facebook.com/havingkids and take action on the new Action Alerts we offer every day. Or volunteer at HavingKids.org for one of our four primary campaigns.

    Get involved – it’s your world and future too.
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  • Having Kids asks Tully star Charlize Theron to speak out

    Having Kids asks Tully star Charlize Theron to speak out

    In an open letter sent today, Having Kids is urging the star of Tully, UN Messenger of Peace, and model parent Charlize Theron to break a universal taboo and call for a change to family planning laws, worldwide. Her public statements about parenting, UN title, and courageous portrayals of the lives of women in her films make her an ideal candidate to lead a change. The letter said this:

    That is why we are writing to ask you to break a universal taboo, and in your words and own way, speak out publicly for the worldwide need for a better family planning model, one that prioritizes the needs of future children and the universal value of smaller, more sustainable, and truly equitable families.

    Read the full letter here. 

    The facts are clear:

    Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids, said this to Ms. Theron: “We stand ready to assist you in any way we can, but are confident that you will find the best way to do this.”

    For more information, please visit HavingKids.org

  • The Fight for Our Future Too Taboo to Talk About

    The Fight for Our Future Too Taboo to Talk About

    A recent story in Utah had a lot to say about lower fertility rates in the state, and the need for better policies “[i]f we’re really serious about being pro-natal and wanting people to have children . . . . “ The article used an example of one young woman as an example, citing women seeking higher levels of education and entering the workforce, of the underlying problem.

    This study is exemplified in 28-year-old, Lauren Steadman. She has her master’s degree in information science and a well-paying job. Although she wants to be a mother someday, she’s forgone that life goal in order to be more financially secure. “My husband and I made a deliberate decision to wait until we have kids later specifically after school, after we were established in our careers,” said Steadman. Steadman also plans to have two to three children, a few less than her mother had. “(I have) no plans as of now to quit my job and stay at home,” said Steadman. Steadman says although she may change her mind when she has children, as of now, she plans to continue to work. She plans to either put her children in daycare or hire a nanny.

    Higher Housing Costs

    One of the reasons for lower fertility rates notes by the article is the price of housing, but that’s a result of increasing population and demand. Larger families won’t help reduce housing prices – though the housing industry is all for pronatal policies and the higher prices it brings. Will it otherwise help women like Lauren?

    Waiting To Have Kids

    One of the reasons fertility rates have fallen drastically around the world involves gender equality. Women with one child can experience motherhood as well as other things in life, rather than the more monochrome life of constant motherhood. Parents waiting to have kids in order to attain high education also benefits their future children. Short term pronatal incentives designed to override longer term thinking might not be the best way to help women like Lauren.

    How Kids Are Affected

    Will kids benefit from policies meant to increase family size? Utah ranks well in the nation for overall child welfare, but is one of the worst states in the U.S. for child abuse and neglect (especially sexual abuse). How do policies that simply to try to arbitrarily push for higher fertility rates prevent more creating abuse and neglect? Would investing in improving child welfare, rather than investing in creating more kids, be a better approach? More broadly, Utah’s kids are concerned about climate change – recently urging state legislators recently to do something about it, and the fact is that large families are the worst way to exacerbate climate change, and worsen other environmental impacts that have disparate impacts on children, like air pollution. Environmental threats like climate change are not just about protecting the environment – they determine social outcomes, and now present a threat to U.S. national security

    Who’s Behind The Fertility Push?

    As the article notes, Utah continues to have the highest fertility rate in the U.S., youngest population, earliest age at first marriage, and largest household size in the nation. If women and kids don’t necessarily benefit from such policies, who will? Big business loves Utah. The state consistently ranks highest in the nation for catering to business, in part because its population growth rate ensures a good supply of cheap labor, weak unions, and tax and regulatory policies that disfavor workers. Beyond Utah, big businesses like Toys “R” Us, which blamed women’s lower birth rate for falling sales and their eventual closure. Businesses push women to have kids because they benefit from population growth while always pushing the costs forward, in what U.N. chief likened to a Ponzi scheme robbing future generations.

    A Better Solution

    What would be the best policy for Lauren and women like her? One alternative to the growth model, and the parent-centered policies that promote it, is the child-first Fair Start model. It treats the trend to lower fertility rates for what it is: the evolution of our species towards more sustainable families that can invest more in, and better develop and protect, each child. The Fair Start model is simple: Child-first family planning means parents working with their communities to get the resources they need to give their child a fair start in life, with equal opportunities relative to the child’s peers. It also means planning a smaller family so that parents and others can invest more in each child. Whether the average woman in the world chooses larger families or the Fair Start model will change world population by billions in the decades to come, as well as determine who future generations become. Will we be workers and consumers in massive, unequal and unsustainable economies, or educated and empowered citizens in functional and sustainable democracies? The fight for the future is on, though few would ever recognize it. Planning smaller and more sustainable families liberates parents, kids and the community. More time for parents, more resources for kids, and a better us going forward.

    Giving up growth will not be easy. We feed off of ignoring minimum standards of child welfare, fair starts in life, protecting our kids future environment because doing so brings us easy wealth.

    But if we love our kids we will change our ways. Take action here to start.

  • Having Kids Announces Sustainable Families Campaign

    Having Kids Announces Sustainable Families Campaign

    Having Kids is urging families to come together in support of a new family planning model that puts children first and to speak out about their choices. The Sustainable Families campaign promotes smaller and more sustainable families, and a move towards cooperative family planning designed to give every child a fair start in life.

    Erika Mathews and her partner have chosen a smaller and more sustainable family, where they can invest more time, love, and energy in their daughter, as well as in their community. Erika and her family are leading by example, and building a better future for all.

    The Phelps-Mathews Family
    The Phelps-Mathews Family

    The facts are clear:

    Having Kids has come under fire recently for promoting better family planning. The debate over family planning models pits traditional forms of family planning, where some benefit from a growing population, massive inequality and dysfunctional democracies, against everyday families who take a child-first and values-centered approach to having kids. The two models would create vastly different futures, based on whether we use kids to fuel our economy or invest in them.

    “Family planning, more than anything else, determines the future,” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids. “Parents often say they will do anything to protect their kids. If that’s the case they should join us and speak out.”

    Interested in becoming a Sustainable Family and speaking out? Write us today at Info@HavingKids.org.

  • Florida Child Abuse: Having Kids Responds to Critics

    Florida Child Abuse: Having Kids Responds to Critics

    This week Having Kids urged officials in Florida to consider a Fair Start order in the event of a conviction of a couple charged with child abuse. Part of the media coverage of Having Kids’ letter included a response by a Florida-based civil rights attorney, Andrea Flynn Mogensen, who expressed concern that a Fair Start order would infringe upon an individual’s constitutional rights, including one’s fundamental right to privacy.

    Having Kids agrees that preservation of fundamental rights is important, but all courts recognize that these rights are not unlimited. Specifically, when an individual is convicted of felony offenses, our legal system is rife with examples of limiting constitutional rights – convicted felons lose their right to possess weapons, for example, associate with other convicted felons, and even to vote for certain lengths of time. In fact, Florida is one of only two states in the country that imposes a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record.  

    If the legal system is able to put restrictions on certain fundamental rights for convicted felons, the government has the authority to impose narrowly tailored restrictions on the right to have children for those convicted of child abuse or neglect, for the rehabilitation of the parents, and for limited periods of time. Each person’s liberty is restricted by the liberties of others, and when it comes to parenting in the context of a child abuse conviction, we must protect the rights of future children.It’s the most compelling state interest of all – the most important collective concern, because it determines the future.

    To address additional points raised by Ms. Mogensen:

    • The United States is not the only country with constitutional liberties. But if we want our system of human rights to be the best in the world, we should understand that the right to have children is nuanced and not reducible to the nonsense of “it’s nobody else’s business.” 
    • The right to have kids is not unlimited; several high courts have upheld fair start-type probation orders. Ms. Mogensen’s statement that courts are limited to policing pregnant mothers is incorrect.  
    • The orders would ideally be authorized by state legislation. If Florida legislators want to protect kids and prevent their abuse, they will sponsor and pass such legislation, permitting judges the legal authority to make such orders in narrow circumstances, where appropriate. 
    • There is no legal or moral rationale for ensuring that abusive and/or neglectful parents have more kids while they are being rehabilitated. Doing so puts children into unfit surroundings (either the troubled home or failing child protection systems) and thereby harms them.  

    The bottom line is that we, as a society, show ourselves willing to tolerate child abuse and neglect until we embrace limitations like Fair Star orders. Are we really willing to make a policy decision that harms parents, kids, and the community, when we can’t even articulate a concrete reason for doing so? Think about it. Having Kids stands for reason, and for child-first family planning. Join us!

    Take action now to prevent, and not just react to, child abuse and neglect.

  • We Must Not Allow Child Abusers To Create More Victims

    We Must Not Allow Child Abusers To Create More Victims

    Since 1983, the month of April has been designated Child Abuse Prevention month in the US. Although there is certainly more awareness about child abuse today – 35 years later – the number of cases of abuse and neglect continues to rise. Having Kids is taking steps to protect children by urging judges to prevent convicted child abuse from having additional children. Even this very clearly defined and limited step is surprisingly controversial, as society currently privileges parents’ “right” to reproduce above what should be every child’s right to be born into even a minimum level of well-being.

    Recently, Having Kids targeted parents in a particularly egregious child abuse case in Tennessee for Fair Start orders. Having Kids selected Tennessee because their legislature is considering legislation HB 2520/SB2133, which would limit state courts’ authority from using coercive family planning as part of sentencing. The legislation is a direct response to one judge’s recent and controversial offers of reduced sentencing conditioned on sterilization. This legislation sets one end of the spectrum of state intervention in family planning – what is not permissible – and that is laudable. Permissible and necessary family planning must also be discussed, however. After all, the state has no greater interest than the well-being of its citizens, including its future citizens.

    Having Kids asked Tennessee Governor Haslam to consider working with the legislature to protect future children from abuse, using its existing and constitutionally approved probationary authority. Sharon Helene Robinson and Bradley Dwight Hill stand accused of criminal child neglect after their severely autistic child was found naked, and covered in both human and dog feces, which he was eating. The police reported: “Ms. Robinson stated that she is a meth user and this also contributed to her not caring for her autistic son.”

    Having Kids petitioned state authorities to seek a Fair Start court order, in the event the couple is convicted, temporarily prohibiting them from having additional children during the pendency of any probation, in order to facilitate the couple’s rehabilitation and recovery, and, more importantly, to prevent the neglect of any future children.

    Having Kids is targeting Tennessee because of what HB 2520/SB2133 expressly says regarding coercive family planning and sentencing, and the broader and problematic message it sends regarding family planning, in general. The model Fair Start order is non-coercive and seeks to strike a balance between the rights of parents and the needs of future children and the community. The charges against Robinson and Hill show a clear need for that balance, and Fair Start orders make clear the state’s compelling interest in the welfare of future children. We must not allow child abusers to create more of their own victims; Fair Start orders represent a clear and constitutionally appropriate step forward.

    Ultimately, a better future for all means reforming family planning to focus on the child, first and foremost, to give every child a fair start in life. Please join us in this work for a better future for all. 

  • Time to End Child Abuse? Take Action Now.

    Time to End Child Abuse? Take Action Now.

    Today Having Kids is petitioning Gov. Rick Scott, as well as state officials and a presiding judge, to consider the possibility of an unusual order in the event a Sarasota couple is convicted of child abuse or neglect.

    In late January, 2018, the Department of Children and Family Services went to the home of Shane Samuels on a child welfare check.  Inside a home with cigarette butts and trash strewn about the floor, investigators found a four-year-old boy with a large red, swollen handprint on the side his face.  Samuels told investigators (and later Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputies) that this child had simply fallen in the backyard and that his injuries were the result of an accident. Doctors’ reports described the boy’s injuries, bruising and hemorrhaging on his face, neck and ears, as the result of “severe physical child abuse” and, on February 13, 2018, the Sheriff’s deputies arrested Samuels and charged him with aggravated child abuse.

    Having Kids is urging state officials to consider a Fair Start court order, in the event of a conviction, temporarily prohibiting the couple from having additional children during the pendency of any probation in order to facilitate the couple’s rehabilitation and recovery, and also to prevent the neglect of any future children.

    Read the full letter here.

    In 2015 alone, there were more than 160,000 reports of child abuse and neglect referred for investigation in Florida. Even more alarming, there were a staggering 126 fatalities from child abuse and neglect in Florida in 2017 – twice as high as the national average. This contributes to Florida’s dismal ranking of 40th in the nation for child wellbeing.

    Take action: Write Gov. Scott a polite message at Rick.Scott@eog.myflorida.gov or tweet him at @FLGovScott and ask him to consider Having Kids’ letter.