Category: Children’s Rights

What do you want the future to look like, for you and for your kids? The family planning decisions we make today will define the future.

As expected, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge announcing their third child has inspired other parents – and not in good ways. The exploding media around the growing Royal family is causing a “three is the new two” frenzy, despite some parents’ warnings and others openly admitting they can’t raise that many kids well:

“There is also a tendency to loosen the reins and lower standards with each subsequent child. I remember when my youngest was two, I discovered he didn’t know any nursery rhymes — because we just hadn’t had time to teach him.”

There has also been a massive outcry to lift the two child limit on some public assistance benefits, although the premise of those arguments is that children in families getting assistance are already struggling. Kate and William seem to have exacerbated the problem.

Could other celebrities do better?

What if instead of having a third child by surrogate, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian had adopted one of the many infants or children waiting for a home in Los Angeles, which has a struggling foster care system filled with needy kids?

What if other celebrities step forward and say: “Parenting is not about making more people who look like us – it’s about leading by example to make sure that every baby is raised with the things they need and deserve. I want all children – not just my own – to live in a better world.”

Instead of modeling bigger families, perhaps one or two celebrities will have the courage to lead by example. For the past month, Having Kids has been asking celebrities to do just that. We want them to adopt the Fair Start model and publicly state: “We are planning a smaller family so we can maximize the child’s love, time, attention, and resources.”

Does this sound good to you? You don’t have to be a celebrity to make the case for smaller families and a fair start for every child! You could be our next Featured Family. Please contact us today.

Yes, Having Kids suggested that Prince William and Kate might forgo having a third child. We did so to encourage them to set an example of the most effective thing possible to mitigate climate change and protect the future.

And yes, it appears the Royal family, and what CNN calls the world’s strongest brand, is getting bigger.

That’s OK. Having Kids wishes Prince William, Kate, and their kids all the best.

The truth is that we don’t have to always rely on celebrities to lead by example. Changing this world for the better does not happen overnight.

This week Having Kids will feature two everyday families, families like you and me, families without a lot of money or prestige. But these families care deeply about all of our futures, working to create a sustainable world that nurtures us all. They are showing their concern and dedication by choosing a smaller family, and choosing to save resources and work with other families to plan a fair start in life for every child.

We can all do the same.

• Look at this chart and know this fact: Your and your kids’ future will be less crowded, cleaner, and safer because of what these everyday smaller and generous families are doing.
• Read this article and know this fact: Children are not getting a fair start in life. Some are born poor and some rich. You can’t care about children and fairness and not want to change that.

We always hear that children are the future, But what does that really mean? It means how we plan families today will determine whether our world will be hotter, more crowded, and filled with people who never got a fair start in life, or greener, cleaner, safer, and filled with people born into loving homes where they got what they deserved.

It’s our future. Let’s build it together.

Recently USA Today reported on the Nigerian militant organization Boko Haram’s increasing use of children as human bombs. Already this year, 83 children – including a baby strapped to a girl – have been used as terrorist tools since the beginning of 2017. Bloomberg reports that many of the victims come from families who donated the children, knowing how they would be used.

The stories raise a compelling question: Are there any limits on who should be allowed to have kids?

Do parents who would donate their young children to be blown up by Boko Haram still have a moral or legal right to have more? Should we as a society say nothing about members of ISIS having more kids, given what will happen to them?

These are questions no one is asking. And not because there are no ways to answer them – bioethicists deal with similar questions all the time – but because there appears to be no way to actually implement such limits. Why ask the question if there is nothing we can do about it? How would the United Nations and the international community begin to limit the right, legally and in practice? How should we actually intervene in these situations to stop parents? The notion is almost silly.

But that’s thinking inside the box. It’s almost equally silly to think laws and policies that are not enforced have no impact on our behavior. Such laws and policies do, and are studied under an area of legal theory and research usually referred to as expressive law. Prominent organizations and governments merely taking a position on a controversial subject – that some people are not fit to have children – can have a tremendous impact.

And what does not taking a position mean? That we think it’s ok for parents who would use their children as human bombs to have kids? Is that what we think? Is that the universal norm we all want to be living with?  

Recently, Mike Huckabee took to Facebook to attack Having Kids and insult the parents who run the organization. However, when challenged to either defend his attacks or apologize on multiple occasions (1, 2), Mr. Huckabee was suddenly silent.

It is almost as though he was more interested in getting cheap laughs from his fans than wanting to honestly face the future and help to solve the world’s problems.

In the meantime, we’ve experienced what is likely to be the most expensive disaster in US history. It is estimated that Hurricane Harvey could cost more than Katrina and Sandy combined.

All this suffering and devastation was exacerbated by global warming. And yet another report has come out showing that the most effective way to combat climate change is family planning.

We will ask again: What will it take for us to have an honest, constructive conversation about leaving our children, and their children, a sustainable world where they can have a fair start?

Imagine a parent torturing their own child. Child Protective Services takes in the child to protect him or her, and begin the long process of trying to find a foster family for the child while courts try to deal with the parent. In the middle of this long, drawn-out process, the parent has another child. Because of the prior abuse, this baby also goes into state custody.

Although there are ranges of outcomes and different stories of children who lived through situations like this, if we look at the statistics, we can safely say that the children going through the state system are not, on average, getting a fair start in life. Recent reports found state systems that are failing children across the board. The community loses out too, because it will pay for the costs of this failing child protective and care system, in the short-term and in the long-term as it absorbs scores of unprepared children reared in public systems.

Would it be possible to design a worse system?

There is a solution. In some egregious cases, judges are ordering abusive parents not to have more children. Many courts have upheld those orders as constitutional, finding that a child’s right to a minimum level of well-being should balance against a parent’s right to have a child.

But the process of using these orders is haphazard and undertheorized.

Having Kids strongly believes a child’s right to a fair start overrides other considerations. We are exploring ways to help standardize this process.

And if you agree that the child’s rights should come first, please click and sign our Fair Start Declaration. Thanks so much!