Fair Start Movement

Category: Community & Stories

  • Why Do Women Get Pushed to Have Kids? Ask the People Doing It.

    Why Do Women Get Pushed to Have Kids? Ask the People Doing It.

    The science is clear that delaying pregnancy, planning ahead, and working together to invest more in every child is the most effective path towards sustainable development. 

    So why are women still getting asked when they will be having kids?

    The regressive view of women as mothers-in-waiting persists partly because so many public figures are pushing it. 

    Jeff Jacoby is one of the loudest voices pushing women to have more kids, and to thereby accelerate climate change, species extinction, and a host of other ecological ills. And it’s not just about nature. Unsustainable family planning is the hidden cause of social crises as well, from rampant child abuse to growing inequality. 

    So why should women have more kids, according to Jeff, who criticized Meghan and Harry for  declaring they would stop at two kids for environmental reasons? Jeff, who himself only has two kids, had this helpful bit of information:

    The Talmud records that when the enslavement of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt grew unbearable, their leaders advised couples to stop having babies — why raise more children to face a life of slavery? Eventually one of those leaders was persuaded he was wrong, and that childrearing should go on even in the teeth of murderous oppression. So he and his wife had another baby. That baby, named Moses, became the liberator who led his people to freedom.

    Jeff goes on to claim that the solution to population-driven climate change is to create more people in the hopes that one of the children will have a solution to the problem. He then credits population growth for a lot of modern advancements. In reality, progress comes from investing in people, not just creating as many as possible and hoping for the best.

    Not All Women Will Be Mothers 

    Regardless – the point is this: Jeff is ensuring a culture where women are pushed to be mothers. He’s doing it for religious reasons, while hiding behind nonsense arguments, and at a time where doing so is a manifest threat to the welfare and freedom of future generations. That goes beyond free speech to something worse than climate change denial – towards encouraging the exacerbation of a manifest threat to our species.

    Parents who care about their kids should stand up to mouthpieces like Jeff. What does he tell his kids, Caleb and Micah, about climate change? Does he tell them that the destruction of our atmosphere is God’s will? Does he tell them that child abuse, vast inequality, and levels of education that bring down democracies come from above? Jeff should answer these questions. Why? Because he’s forcing his view on your kids future too. What we do now will impact the wellbeing of future generations in ways not seen before.

    Ask Jeff to answer these basic questions by tweeting him at @Jeff_Jacoby or message him on FB at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeff-Jacoby/123656506578, and stand up to the men who push women to have kids, and thereby endanger our future. 

     

  • Fair Start Report: Why wait until children are harmed before we act?

    Fair Start Report: Why wait until children are harmed before we act?

    Having Kids unveiled the Fair Start Order campaign in late 2017 and began petitioning state agencies to consider Fair Start Orders and legislation in 2018. We monitor the news for child abuse coverage and strategically select particularly egregious cases to target for Fair Start Orders. So far, we have campaigned for five states to adopt Fair Start Orders, offering our professional in-depth assistance.

    Our new report: Time to Get Serious About Preventing Child Abuse? lays out why we chose those states and what’s happened there since we offered our help. The report also considers the future of the Fair Start Order campaign and how we can best help protect children from child abuse.

    Don’t we have a duty to ensure that children are not subjected to abuse by known offenders? Having Kids advocates for Fair Start judicial orders in cases of criminal abuse and neglect. Fair Start orders prevent abusers from having, and thereby harming, additional children as a condition of probation. These child-centered judicial orders are noncoercive, progressive, constitutional and reflect all five aspects of the Fair Start model. Child abuse presents an ideal context in which to begin the remodeling of our family planning systems. Fair Start orders do more than prevent child abuse. They allow parents to focus on rehabilitation so that they can be ready and capable of providing kids with a safe and supportive environment.

    Take Action Today

    You can help us prevent child abuse on a national level by contacting senate committee members and telling them that you support Having Kids’ proposal for a Fair Start amendment to the Child Abuse and Prevention Treatment Act.

    Email Ranking Member senator Patty Murray

  • Guest Blog: San Francisco Public Health Professional Addresses Family Planning

    Guest Blog: San Francisco Public Health Professional Addresses Family Planning

    Recently a public health professional in California contacted Having Kids to discuss the impact of family planning on the lives of children. This is what they had to say.

    As a public health professional working for the City and County of San Francisco, I am passionate about improving outcomes for at-risk youth and families. Over the years, I have contributed to the evidence-base on what works in mental health and behavioral health care. My greatest interest lies in prevention work, intervening early enough in life to ensure that children get the love and support they need to thrive and become healthy adults. It’s a passion that pervades my personal life, as I plan to foster and adopt my first child – a decision I’ve made for ethical reasons and one that reflects caring for those in need rather than creating new need.

    Child welfare is an issue that has risen to near-crisis level in San Francisco. The hasty decision to close our Juvenile Hall is evidence of a broken system whereby community organizations, child welfare and juvenile justice fail to effectively work together on developing long-term solutions, in one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The affordable housing crisis is driving many in the next generation into the streets.   

    Families are one of the strongest socializing forces in our lives

    Unfortunately, many children come from homes with considerable conflict, putting them at high risk for negative health outcomes. In San Francisco, children and families that come into regular contact with human service agencies, like Child Welfare, Juvenile Probation, and Behavioral Health generally have low socioeconomic status and experience chronic stress related to this. It is common to see children, and their siblings, with mental diagnoses such as oppositional defiant disorder, major depression, and PTSD. 

    A substantiated allegation of abuse or neglect can result in a child being removed from their home, however, this is often too late as trauma can permanently impact developing minds. Also, removal from the home brings additional challenges. Children removed from the home may already have attachment issues due to a lack of a stable family environment and they are now being asked to trust multiple providers (case workers, doctors, foster parents, probation officers, etc.). Given the lack of consistent relationships in their lives, they do not know who they trust, and lose a sense of identity and place, putting them in a very vulnerable position for exploitation. In fact, 60% of all sex trafficking victims have a history of involvement with the child welfare system.  Oakland is considered a national hub for child-sex trafficking.

    Similarly, juvenile justice-involved youth can be removed from the home. They tend to be older and more criminally sophisticated, and it is therefore challenging to find foster/resource families. Instead, youth are placed in group home facilities, or, depending on the nature of the crime, a more secure facility. In California, the cost to maintain a youth in a group home facility is approximately $10-12K per month with negative outcomes such as running away, early mortality, being in and out of the prison system in adulthood, mental health and behavioral health issues, and chronic homelessness. Teens and youth with multiple placements present a significant barrier to reunification.

    All of this creates a pipeline for human trafficking, and horrific cases of domestic violence. I’ve seen the moms and kids stuck in this world with my own eyes. And I know the problem began long ago, in families where the children were being set up for failure. The opioid crisis has only amplified to levels that are breaking public health and child welfare systems around the country.  

    A big challenge is how can we intervene early enough to impact children’s lives so that they can thrive and become healthy, contributing members of society? A major challenge is keeping up with the pace of this public health crisis whereby so many children and their siblings are experiencing early neglect and trauma, essentially becoming pawns of the “cradle to prison” pipeline.

    Family planning is prevention work

    By changing the way we plan families, we take prevention work to another level, finding ways to encourage all parents to have smaller, more equitable and better-planned families, thereby reducing the scale of this crisis and re-purposing resources to focus on evidence-based services that improve long-term outcomes. Programs such as the Perry Preschool Program which focuses on the developmental growth of at-risk children and resulted in a 7–10% per year return on investment based on increased school and career achievement, as well as reduced costs in remedial education, health, and criminal justice system expenditures.

    As a society, we need to create policies that uphold the rights of children. Smarter family planning leads to better outcomes. Period. It is time to take a long-range prevention approach and embrace better family planning models like Fair Start.

  • Wajahat Ali and What it Means to Invest in Children

    Wajahat Ali and What it Means to Invest in Children

    Everyone at Having Kids was happy to see Wajahat Ali’s TED Talk “The case for having kids.” The presentation breaks the taboo that surrounds talking about the need for better family planning policies and closes with a plea to invest in current and future generations. It is clear to us that Mr. Ali loves children and wants the best for them. We do, too, so we reached out to urge him to build upon his important work and consider the details of what it means to truly invest in children.

    Read our letter to Mr. Ali about investing in future generations.

    Urging people to simply “have babies” plays into the pyramid Ponzi scheme mentality of using future generations as tools for economic growth. Mr. Ali’s talk, however well intentioned, could do more harm than good. Only truly human rights-based family planning policies will set our children free from a system based on greed. Poor family planning is the norm, and it causes real harm every day. Children are born into starvation and horrific abuse, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and climate change is only beginning to wreak havok.

    Our Fair Start family planning model is designed to invest in future generations. We can shift the world’s thinking from isolationist family planning focused on what parents want, toward an approach that helps everyone. We need a more comprehensive and cooperative focus that considers what children and the community need. The Fair Start model creates a system that maximizes child welfare, equity, and sustainability.

    We are asking Mr. Ali to use his status as an influential public figure to keep breaking taboos around discussing family planning. We are also urging him to be clear that helping future generations doesn’t mean just “having babies.” It means planning a Fair Start.

    Sincerely,

    Erika and Willow, and Carter

    The Phelps-Mathews Family
    The Phelps-Mathews Family

    Join Erika and Willow by tweeting @WajahatAli and politely asking him to consider the Fair Start model.

  • Why Animal, Enviro, Social Justice Orgs Should Support Better Family Planning

    Why Animal, Enviro, Social Justice Orgs Should Support Better Family Planning

    Do you work with a social justice organization, like an environmental, child welfare, animal protection, or human rights group? If so, one of the best ways to further your organization’s mission in by promoting Fair Start family planning.

    Why?

    For example – many animal protection advocates focus on changing diets as a way to protect animals from the horrors of factory farming and wildlife from the horrors of climate change that is partially driven by factory farming. The impact of this approach has been completely overridden by recent population growth, which is set to continue.

    Isn’t it time to work upstream? 

    • Fair Start family planning is not just effective. It is comprehensively effective, or intersectional. It aligns environmentalism, animal protection, and human rights in one unifying campaign to reform the way we plan families. This isn’t just a matter of using words like intersectional to appear thoughtful. The creation of future generations is something that connects us all.

    Social justice organizations could magnify their impact exponentially by including family planning reform in their programming. For some organizations, there is the option of including Fair Start advocacy in their lawful civil disobedience programs. How could they do this specifically?

    In addition to current work organizations could lawfully target entities like Exxon who are harming untold numbers of children and animals through their impact on climate and other aspects of the environment, and who have special obligations to fund Fair Start family planning systems given the harm they have caused.

    It’s time to create fundamental change, and be effective and intersectional at the same time. Social justice work starts with people, and in the long run, people start with family planning. It’s time for to ensure a fair start for all kids. Learn more at HavingKids.org. 

    TAKE ACTION:
    Join us in urging the U.N. Secretary-General to issue a statement recommending sustainable family planning for World Population Day. RSVP to our event, help us share the event, and send him a message here.

     

  • 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. 

  • College Admissions Scandals Are ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

    College Admissions Scandals Are ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

    The ultra-rich bribing their kids’ way into elite colleges has dominated the headlines for weeks now, as have follow-on stories about the perfectly legal ways the wealthy use their influence to get slots at the top schools.

    Why do we care? We care because our society is built on the rule that people must earn the benefits they receive. This is a country born on an ideal that monarchies and other birth-hierarchies should be torn down and that each person should earn their benefits. Wealth and social classes are not supposed to dictate success in life. Rich kids should not have an advantage over others.

    That’s why this scandal has received so much attention – aided by the salacious celebrity connection.  But the media isn’t looking at the whole picture. If we are going to constitute true fairness and opportunity, we have to take the idea of giving every child a fair start from the beginning of life, when it really matters.

    That massive inequality is a significant factor in the college attainment rate being less than a third of our population. The reality is that rich kids stay rich and poor kids stay poor. 

    Anthony Jack, author and assistant professor at Harvard University made the critical observation that, “[college admissions bribery] is a continuation of things that wealthy things have been doing for their children since they were born… This is opportunity hoarding 101. These are wealthy individuals trying to amass every resource and opportunity at the expense of other people… These are the parents that pay a thousand dollars an hour for the SAT, or get people to write their children’s essays… This isn’t something that started in a student’s eleventh or twelfth grade year.”

    “This is opportunity hoarding 101.”

    To change that, we have to start at the very beginning – with the conditions in which people are born. We can create a more level playing field by changing the way we plan families. Fair Start family planning means delaying parenthood, working with others, and investing more resources in each child. When parents wait and have smaller families, they are more likely to break the cycle of poverty. It positions their kids for greater early learning, emotional development and academic achievement. Smaller families make also these investments sustainable for communities, and attainable for families.

    Our centers of power are morally obligated to ensure a fair start for all kids. Guaranteed Minimum Income tied to family planning is one way to achieve it. We have also asked Senator Elizabeth Warren to tie her universal child care plan to family planning.

    Before Fair Start family planning we did not have a clear way to fix the problem of massively unfair starts in life because we could not control for the conditions in which children were born or protect human rights. But with Fair Start, parents who need resources, and are willing to wait and plan, have an overriding moral entitlement to the resources they need from the greatest concentrations of power. And because giving kids a fair start in life – or the creation of what John Rawls called free and equal people – is the beginning of democracy, it has to be our primary – our priority – policy objective.

     

    What can you do to challenge the status quo?
    • Tweet @SenWarren asking her to tie her universal child care proposal to #fairstart family planning.
    • Ask Washington D.C. @MayorBowser to consider Guaranteed Minimum Income tied to family planning to reduce inequality in the district.
    • Tweet these influential journalists and ask them to cover the need for Fair Start family planning reform.
    • Engage a person you know is especially wealthy and giving their kids an unfair start in life  – unearned benefits and privileges – asking that they justify their actions. Report back your story so we can publicize it. 
  • Mother of Eight, Rachel Campos-Duffy Denies Climate Change. Take Action for Kids.

    Mother of Eight, Rachel Campos-Duffy Denies Climate Change. Take Action for Kids.

    Does life imitate art? Fox News contributor an former Real World cast member Rachel Campos-Duffy evokes a scene from the famous movie, Idiocracy. As a mother of eight, she denies climate change and openly promotes the worst way to intensify it – more irresponsible family planning.

    Fact: The root cause of most of our environmental and social crises, like climate change, massive inequality, child abuse, terrorism and social conflict, and the decline of democracy, come from one root source: poor and unsustainable family planning.

    Is it fair that many of us have to worry about having one because people like her selfishly have eight?

    Is it fair to put the burden of dealing with the fallout of her reckless behavior on her kids, as she suggests?

    We all love our kids. We want the best for them. We have an obligation to ensure a future world that is safe and secure for them, filled with people who were born and raised with everything they need to work together for a better world. We should confront people that threaten our children and their future by promoting irresponsible and unsustainable family planning. We should not let the future for our kids be defined by people like Rachel Campos-Duffy.

    Take action:

    Tweet Rachel @RCamposDuffy, and ask her to answer these simple questions: Do all kids deserve a fair start in life and how would you ensure that? Is having eight kids sustainable? What steps are you taking to make the future world safe and secure for you own kids?

    Rachel is impacting the world we all share, and the future our kids will inherit. Help hold her accountable and urge her to engage on and debate the issues she raised.