Fair Start Movement

Category: Community & Stories

  • A Holistic Approach to Having Kids

    A Holistic Approach to Having Kids

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    In St. Louis, Missouri, pediatricians are taking a holistic approach to having kids. They’re starting to ask parents about their financial situation and whether they live in poverty. If parents do live in poverty, they’re provided with services that increase the child’s quality of life today while saving money on health costs in the future. Doctors are trying to be proactive to help improve everyone’s quality of life.

    Collectively, we need to come together to provide resources to those who don’t have them so that we can improve the quality of life of individuals and the communities that we live in. Having Kids provides families with sex education and family planning, encouraging everyone to have smaller families so we can dedicate more resources to each child. By providing resources to families to support family planning decisions and their children, we can raise the bar for all.

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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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  • Zika: Why Aren’t We Prepared?

    Zika: Why Aren’t We Prepared?

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    As the Zika virus spreads and thousands of severely disabled children continue to be born, many are asking why the world is not better prepared. Last week, in a letter published in the New York Times, Having Kids suggested one answer. Traditional models of parenting that isolate parents and treat the act of having kids as an entirely personal matter push directly against society collectively deciding when and in what conditions to bring children into the world. These models have left us unable to help women avoid pregnancies, even in the face of a crisis we should easily be able to avoid. How is it possible that we cannot work together to collectively decide, as a global community, to delay pregnancy in the face of a future generation that will suffer for our inaction? The truth is that collective decision-making about having kids is something the world hasn’t done well – and now, when we really need to do it, we are unable.

    What’s the solution? Having Kids moves us from a model that says “you can’t talk about this” to one that asks how we can work together to solve problems. It’s the model that should have been in place before the Zika epidemic. It’s the model that would have helped us face this crisis as a united community, making decisions about the well-being of our future children together. By promoting smaller families working together to invest more in each child, our model focuses on bringing children into the world with a minimum level of well-being and equal opportunities in life. And it doesn’t just help people: It helps heal nature and our ailing democracies. Let’s start to face Zika by changing the way the world thinks about having kids. 

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  • Leo’s Leap of Faith

    Leo’s Leap of Faith

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    Leonardo DiCaprio captured headlines again with a vague hint for adoring fans eager to know about his plans to have children: “Do you mean do I want to bring children into a world like this?” asked the 41-year-old actor. “If it happens, it happens. I’d prefer not to get into specifics about it, just because then it becomes something that is misquoted. But, yeah.”

    Here’s what’s interesting about the statement. Leo seems concerned about the world his children would inherit—and rightly so. But he seems to disconnect that concern, as most people do, from the act of having those children. The fact is, our future world will look and be like the people born and raised today—the children we have. And we can make that future bright by working together to make those children the best they can be. Leo disconnects the two issues because under the current isolation model of parenting, Leo has no control over the future his children will inherit; in our current model, parents go off to private enclaves to make these decisions. But we can break that model and make the future safe for our children. Things like the Having Kids model—where everyone works together to have fewer children and invest more in each child—offer a better alternative.

    By working together, we don’t have to make a leap of faith. Together, we can shape our future.

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  • Kim and Kanye Calling it Quits?

    Kim and Kanye Calling it Quits?

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    It might be too soon to call, but it appears that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are calling it quits on having any more kids. A TMZ exclusive reports that the “couple is completely cool with capping off their brood at two kids.” Did they decide based on concerns over Kim’s health, or the desire for a better future for their two children? We may never know, but we wish them the best either way!

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  • Our Values: Population is About More Than Just Numbers

    Our Values: Population is About More Than Just Numbers

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    Recently, the New York Times reported on the need for higher birthrates in China and Europe. There is an unspoken assumption looming behind Steven Erlanger’s article, which rings alarm bells about “aging populations and not enough babies.” He assumes that healthy demographics require replacement-level fertility. But is it true? Even at current birthrates, we’ll fill our world with more than eleven billion people by 2100. Does anyone want their children to live in a world like that, given that our current population of 7.2 billion is enough to degrade our atmosphere, acidify our oceans, change our climate, and cause the mass extinction of other species? Demographics is about values as much as numbers. Assuming the need for replacement-level fertility values traditional growth economics over a cleaner, safer, and healthier future – for us and for our children.

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