Fair Start Movement

Category: Climate Crisis & Ecocide

  • Take Action for the Climate!

    Take Action for the Climate!

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    [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]Are you sick of hearing about climate change without being able to do anything truly meaningful about it? But we can take action! Today Having Kids is launching our Protect Your World campaign. It’s simple:

    We all know that if you want to better the world, you can think globally but need to act locally. And when it comes to mitigating climate change (and almost every other way we are destroying our children’s environment), the best way is by working with others to plan smaller and more sustainable families.

    Having Kids is working with local governments to adopt policies, often as part of their Climate Action Plans, to:

    • Explicitly recognize (in their climate action plan or in other ways) the role family planning plays in climate change;
    • Endorse and/or implement any family planning model that promotes smaller, more sustainable, and more equitable families that provide every child a fair start.

    You can make this case in your community, too!

    Please start with this sample letter, and use it to open a dialogue with your local town, city, or county government about the need to take a position on family planning.

    You can contact us to assist with the process.

    The best way to protect your world is by changing the way we all plan families.

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  • Care about Climate, Care about Kids

    Care about Climate, Care about Kids

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    Post from guest blogger Courtney.

    Like most Americans, I am well aware of the dangers of global warming. The topic is a common subject across media platforms, occupying space on television news, blogs, and Facebook posts. Most people in progressive circles express a fair amount of certainty that thanks to climate change, life on this planet will be very difficult for its inhabitants, even 50 years from now.

    And yet, the context, even one as dire as many of us envision, does not currently play a central role in people’s decision to have children. This seems odd, but it’s a natural consequence of the one-sided parenting model we now operate under. Under the three-sided model proposed by Having Kids, people would frame their decision not only in terms of their own desires, but also in the interest of their children and of the community/society.

    In an environmental context where global warming is a major factor, potential parents should weigh their desire to parent against the wellbeing of their future child, as well as the ability of the community to respond effectively to a changing climate and environment. Such decision-making might result in a person deciding not to have children or deciding to have fewer children — children they would better equip to live in this more challenging world. Either way, the decision would be one that emerged from a broader — and some might say truer — perspective on the situation at hand.

    At Having Kids:

    We promote and protect every child’s right to a fair start in life by replacing unsustainable, parent-centered family planning models with the human rights-based and child-centered Fair Start family planning model. The model suggests a shift in family planning from a subjective focus on just the parents, to an objective focus that considers the interests of the potential child, the parents, and the community.

    It’s all about this: Smaller families working together to give every child a fair start in life.

    Today many families are adopting the Fair Start family planning model. First, they try to give their child a fair start in life by having a smaller family where they can invest more in their child. Often they also foster or adopt one of the many children eagerly waiting for parents rather than creating additional need. Second, they publicly role model their choices. Finally, these families join public advocacy campaigns to shift resources from extractive centers of power like governments, corporations, and wealthy families in order to democratically empower children and future citizens by incentivizing better family planning by all parents. Why? All parents know that the quality of their own child’s life will depend on how other parents decide to have and raise their kids.

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  • Meaningful Action for Earth

    Meaningful Action for Earth

    Changing the way we plan families is the most effective way to fight climate change. We can’t ignore the need for reform and still claim to care about either the environment or children. Without rational, fair start family planning, we will be condemning countless children to an unfair life at the mercy of a dangerous climate.

    As part of Earth Day 2017, Having Kids is urging Los Angeles and Berkeley to update their historic climate change action plans with a novel but powerful provision: increased funding for family planning.

    Many major cities have climate action plans, and these are increasingly important as the federal government fails to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change. But these cities do not address family planning as an effective way to respond.

    A study by statisticians at Oregon State University found that the greenhouse gas impact of having an additional child in the U.S. is almost 20 times greater than a lifetime of recycling, reducing, and reusing. They also found that each child born in the U.S. will add about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The study concludes, “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.”

    Carter Dillard, Having Kids’ co-founder and President, notes: “In light of the exponentially positive long-term environmental impact of family planning, increasing these services must play a key role in continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

    “California’s cities should once again lead the nation by recognizing the irrefutable link between investment in family planning programs and the prospects for climate change,” says Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids. “Let’s do what’s most effective, help cities in other states do the same, and make up for what is lacking at the federal level.”

    Increased focus on family planning has numerous environmental and social benefits, including decreasing various forms of pollution, alleviating pressure on housing and social services, and reducing traffic. Given the unparalleled results family planning can produce, cities have little reason not to include provisions in major initiatives like their climate action plans.

  • Kids and Climate Change: What Do We Do?

    Kids and Climate Change: What Do We Do?

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    Recently, NPR asked a very important question: should we be having kids in the age of climate change? Professors at Johns Hopkins have been asking this question for a very long time. Their conclusion is that we can, but we should significantly limit the number of children we have in order to reduce carbon emissions and give populations susceptible to climate change their best chance.

    And that’s what the Having Kids model is all about. It’s about asking smaller families to work together to plan a better future for every child. That means that potential parents should think about their future children and the community that their children will enter. They need to ask the question, “What would give my child, my community, and other children the best quality of life?” They will quickly find that limiting their family size and contributing resources to their community to help create a safe place for their child to grow are the best options, especially in the face of climate change.

    The statistics NPR cites on the carbon emissions of large families, relative to other lifestyle choices, are sobering. Below are a few examples of how much carbon dioxide (in metric tons) is saved over a lifetime (80 years) by a typical American for certain actions, including not having one child.

    • Increase car’s fuel economy from 20 to 30 mpg: 148 tons
    • Reduce miles driven from 231 to 155 per week: 147 tons
    • Replace single-glazed windows with energy-efficient windows: 121 tons
    • Replace ten 75-watt incandescent bulbs with 25-watt energy-efficient lights: 36 tons
    • Replace old refrigerator with energy-efficient model: 19 tons
    • Recycle newspapers, magazines, glass, plastic, aluminum and steel cans: 17 tons
    • Reduce number of children by one (with emissions fixed at 2005 per-capita values): 9,441 tons

    Source: “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals” by Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax

    For too long, parenting models focused on the choices of the parents without putting them in the context of a larger community. These models didn’t emphasize the needs of future children. Having Kids wants to change the conversation. We want potential parents to think critically about the needs of their child, the world they want to bring their child into, and how they will ensure that world becomes a reality. We want to see a world where the impacts of climate change are prevented, and where every child can be guaranteed a high quality of life.

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  • Singapore is Working Against Itself

    Singapore is Working Against Itself

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    Like many other countries at the Paris climate negotiations last year, Singapore promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Although some experts criticized those promises as insufficient, others say they are unrealistic. Singapore’s Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifl called the plan “very aggressive, very ambitious.” Singapore’s goal is to hit an emissions peak by 2030.

    “This is a huge challenge because we still need to have an economy that will support our people’s livelihood and at the same time, not produce even more emissions for that purpose,” Zulkifi said.

    But even while Singapore struggles to lower its emissions, it’s also working to increase emissions by increasing family size as it addresses what it calls a national baby shortage. What’s an alternative? Instead of pushing for larger families and working against its own climate plan and an obvious social trend towards smaller families, Singapore could be designing its family modeling around families working together to make better investments in each child. The Having Kids model can help.

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  • Mixed Messages on Climate Change & Unsustainable Growth

    Mixed Messages on Climate Change & Unsustainable Growth

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    We’re hearing mixed messages about the state of our planet and the people on it. On the one hand, census reports show that the United States, which is struggling to deal with its current carbon footprint in order to protect future generations from climate change, will become a lot more crowded in years to come. Yet some thought leaders in Washington are pushing for faster growth “because it will help us sustain our labor force” and “increase consumer demand for lots of products that young people and young adults and young householders need.” 

    Businesses may benefit in the short term from a growing supply of workers competing against each other for jobs and long lines of customers to buy their goods and services, but the long term effects are much less clear. The approach raises many questions and highlights the mixed messages we’re receiving. Doesn’t this growth make it harder to mitigate climate change, which is already a major issue? Does having more kids mean less time and energy will be invested in each child? How does crowding affect kids’ quality of life, the connection between people and their community, their connection to nature, and our ability to work together to define the future? Are we all better off, in the long run, with small families working together to invest more in each child?

    These are important questions, and they need answering. Let’s start the conversation

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