Fair Start Movement

Category: Educational Guides & Resources

  • Giving Tuesday: Why Donate to Having Kids?

    Giving Tuesday: Why Donate to Having Kids?

    You care about kids. You care about the environment. You care about equality. Why not do something to protect the things you care about, all at the same time?

    You can, simply by helping people work together and think ahead when it comes to planning their families.

    This is the Fair Start family planning model, and Having Kids is finding ways to build it into our legal, corporate, and cultural systems:

    • We all help parents wait, plan, and be ready before they have kids.
    • We also help them fight for the resources they need, and have a right to, to give their kids a fair start in life.
    • We ease this process by helping to promote smaller, cooperative and more equitable families.

    On this Giving Tuesday please consider what Having Kids does, and give what you can.

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  • What Are the Consequences of the Baldwins’ Example?

    What Are the Consequences of the Baldwins’ Example?

    Alec and Hilaria Baldwin have announced that their recent fourth child was the first one they had “planned.” They have since been criticized for having a large family. The Baldwins’ quickly responded:

    “Here is why we like having babies: they are simply so lovely and bring so much joy. Plus, I feel like we need to populate this world with a whole next generation of really good people. My little Baldwinitos are such good souls and I hope they continue to grow and make this world a better place.”

    There is a problem with that approach to parenting. Why couldn’t every couple use the same rationale to justify a large family? If enough people followed this couple’s lead and chose to have four children, we would have no chance to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. We would accelerate the mass extinction of other species, and the quality of our lives would be reduced as we tried to navigate life in even more polluted, politically dysfunctional, and crowded communities.

    In short, we would not be able to help all children have a better future.

    The Baldwin’s choice, applied broadly enough as a model, would make our and our kids’ world uninhabitable. Large families don’t make the future better; they make it worse, for all the reasons that the quality of life in our crowded world today is so much less than it could be.

    There’s another problem. Assuming the Baldwins don’t mean that their rationale should apply to others, we have to figure out who would not qualify for a large family under the Baldwin’s model, and who would not produce a next generation of really good people. If the implication is that the Baldwins wealth is the determining factor, we have to ask why that’s the case, and what justifies any children getting a massive head start in life, with the best health care, nutrition, and educational opportunities available. Why is that fair or justified? Did the children earn that advantage?

    Don’t all kids deserve a fair start in life?

    The great news is that the Baldwins can still act, and publicly choose to stop at four children. They can also help other parents plan something at least approaching a fair start in life for their own kids. They can act to show that having kids is not a private “none of your business” matter, but that which most defines the future we all share.

    If you agree, please politely suggest this option, at @alecbaldwin.

  • What Will It Take?

    What Will It Take?

    Hurricane Harvey has broken all sorts of records, killed dozens, and caused untold suffering and devastation. Anyone who looks honestly as the science knows that global warming has caused this and other storms to be more deadly and destructive.

    As the world becomes more crowded and overheated, events like Harvey, Superstorm Sandy, and Katrina are certain to cause more and more harm, threatening more people and disrupting more lives.

    Study after study has shown that the single most powerful step we can take to combat climate change is family planning (1, 2, 3). This is not a hard problem to address – currently, over half of the pregnancies in the US are unintended! (4)

    What will it take for us as a society to take family planning seriously?

    At Having Kids, we’re not willing to let the planet burn because people are unwilling to broach the taboo of reproduction as a societal concern. We want every child who will be born to have a fair start and be born into an inhabitable, sustainable world.

    It is time to stop passing the buck, expecting others to step up. Be a part of changing the conversation. Please join us today!

    [1] Seth Wynes and Kimberly A Nicholas, The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions. 12 Environ. Res. Lett 7. (2017).

    [2] Paul A. Murtaugh & Michael G. Schlax, Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals, 19 Global Envtl. Change 14, 18 (2009).

    [3] University of California San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, By Slowing Population Growth, Family Planning Can Help Address Food Insecurity and Climate Change (Feb. 3, 2015), available at https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/pdfs/UCSF_Population_Climate_Food_Feb_3_2015.pdf.

    [4] L.B. Finer and M.R. Zolna, Unintended pregnancy in the United States: incidence and disparities, 2006, 84 Contraception 478 (Nov. 2011).

  • Why Write the Royals? A Thinking Person’s Guide to Family Planning

    Why Write the Royals? A Thinking Person’s Guide to Family Planning

    Having Kids recently wrote an open letter to Prince William and Kate Middleton to ask them to consider the Fair Start model in deciding whether to have more kids. The reaction of many proves that we need a public discussion of family planning, and we need it now.

    Much of the reaction to our letter fell into these categories:  

    1) Racist and eugenicist rants about why white and wealthy couples should have lots of kids to compete with birth rates in parts of the Southern Hemisphere. It’s hard to think of a more immoral or lose-lose proposition.

    2) Commentators who think royal family size shouldn’t be of interest to those from other countries. This ignores the global nature of climate change, which does not recognize antiquated national borders. Having Kids has been vocal against Mr. Trump, father of five, on these issues. And our points are equally and obviously applicable to any public figure – wherever they may be – pushing unsustainable families. It’s cognitive dissonance to say that choices which so profoundly affect our world are none of our business.

    3) Bloggers who seem creepily obsessed with celebrity babies, and who would subject the rest of us and our kids to a hotter and more crowded world so they can gawk at other people’s newborns. This seems almost too hard to believe, which explains why the blogs are sponsored by companies that sell baby products. These bloggers will have to tell their children, on one of the hotter days in the future, that they were more interested in the royal offsprings’ clothing than the degradation of the world’s atmosphere.

    4) Some asked why we didn’t write to enormous and less admirable families like the Duggars? The simple answer is that we did. But given the massive swings in population that even small changes to a typical worldwide fertility rate of 2.5 would create, the question of role modeling is best raised in the context of couples considering a second or third child rather than marginal families like the Duggars.

    5) Those who feel the right to have children is totally unlimited, and should not be publicly discussed. The fact is that bioethicists and legal scholars have obliterated all arguments for such a right, and instead shown that the right to have children is more akin to the right to speak freely, which is limited in a way that protects others’ rights. Governments have simply not acted because they benefit from growth, and continue to shuffle the problem off on future generations.

    At the core of the responses, however, was this message: Focus instead on would-be parents who won’t be able to give their kids a fair start in life. That is exactly our point.

    Within our current family planning models, there is no medium in which to have this discussion. Prince William and Kate can’t tell massive and irresponsible families to act responsibly while they ratchet up their family size, claiming their right to do so as a matter of personal privacy. We need a child-centered model that focuses on what all children need, as well as what parents want. We need publicly influential people to break the taboo, step forward and say “I gave my kid a great start in life and tried to protect their future and environment. For my own and your kids’ benefit, I want to help you do the same.”

    That is why we wrote to Prince William and Kate. Their leadership could be an effective way to build a better future by breaking the taboo and setting a new and crucial trend of public family planning. They can break that which keeps us paralyzed in the face of threats like climate change. That is what our letter asked them to consider. It’s not about altruism or charity. It’s about working together to help the actual people who will comprise the future, our future. Many in the past have given their lives to protect this world from various threats. The least we can do is plan our families in a responsible and sustainable manner.

    Our environment is degrading, the gap between rich and poor widens, and children are being born into worlds of unfathomable suffering. We can find the cause in large part in a family planning model that privatizes having kids and prevents vital social cooperation.. Having Kids asks you to change this, and join the discussion about child-centered family planning at Havingkids.org

  • Why This Royal Couple?

    Why This Royal Couple?

    Many supporters have questioned why Having Kids wrote to the royal couple Prince William and Kate Middleton to ask that they publicly choose a smaller and more sustainable family. We also requested that they use their public choice as an opportunity to encourage and help other families give their own children a fairer start in life. Our supporters have wondered whether a larger royal family is really the problem and whether our efforts would be better directed towards regions with higher birth rates and levels of infant mortality.

    Having Kids is focusing on the royal family because:

    1. Given their public stature, they can lead by example to impact family planning decisions around the world.
    2. The impact the wealthiest families have on the environment dwarfs the impact of children born in the developing world.
    3. Given exponential growth, large families – wherever they may be – are simply not sustainable.
    4. The royal family has the resources to cooperatively incentivize other families to plan a fairer start for their own children.  

    The most important part of our ask, however, is for the couple to engage in a child-centered form of family-planning based on objective values. None of us can continue to embrace the unsustainable, subjective, and parent-centered model, which has created the troubled world we live in today. If every one of us were to choose a smaller family, and to also work with other families to plan a fair start in life for their children, the world would be a much better place. We owe it to our children to make that change.

    And the best way to do that is by working together, agreeing that: “If you plan a smaller family with more investment in each child, we’ll do the same. We’ll also help each other whenever we can.” That is the Fair Start model.

    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.

     

  • Why Are We Pushing Women to Have Kids?

    Why Are We Pushing Women to Have Kids?

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    A recent article in The New York Times bemoans the fact that as a reaction to the economic downturn, Greek women are not having “enough” children. But isn’t financial insecurity a good reason to forgo having children? Doesn’t every child deserve to be born into a financially secure situation so they can have a fair start? The article raises those questions — and more.

    Why is a nation’s current population size the baseline to judge what its population should be? Most developed countries are already well over their carrying capacity.Why are all of the personal stories in the article about women? Sure, sales may be down at fertility clinics. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just one symptom of the inevitable hangover of the Ponzi scheme of growth economics.

    Fundamentally, isn’t having smaller families an easier and fairer solution?

    Greece could solve its demographic problems by relaxing immigration restrictions and accommodating the elderly back into the economy. That might be preferable to arguing that all women must be mothers and encouraging larger families in periods of economic instability.

    It is time to start thinking in terms of everyone’s well-being — including a fair start for all children — rather than mindlessly pursuing economic growth regardless of the consequences.

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  • Why We March: Having Kids at the Women’s March On Washington

    Why We March: Having Kids at the Women’s March On Washington

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    On January 21st, people and organizations from across the country will participate in the Women’s March on Washington to stand for women’s rights and reproductive rights and to protect our families and communities. Having Kids staff members and supporters will participate in both the core march in Washington, D.C., and in satellite marches in New York City and Trenton, New Jersey.

    Having Kids is marching for the future of our families, our communities, our children, and our planet. We believe that we all need to be intentional about the future that we want to create for future generations, and we need to make sure they have the resources they need and a healthy environment to have a better life than we did. However, this needs to be true for every child. We cannot be satisfied with the fact that most children born into this world will not have a high quality of life or even have their basic needs met. We need to create a community that cares about one another and sincerely wants to make life better for all.

    We also recognize that if we give people the tools to have smaller families—such as sex education, birth control, and access to reproductive health services—then they can ensure that more resources are available for each of their children to create this future. In fact, they might have more resources leftover to help other families that might be struggling.

    Having Kids believes that we need to look at things more holistically, and that we need to make sure that we have the ability to provide a healthy planet, safe communities, and the things children need to have a high quality of life. Next Saturday, we will march for these values and to protect the programs that help us move toward that future. Will you march with us?

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  • How Can We Unite the Country after the Election?

    How Can We Unite the Country after the Election?

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    Scan the news after this divisive U.S. election and you’ll hear calls to unite the country after threats and violence erupt across the nation. As heart-warming as those calls to unite may be, what can be done to truly create real commonalities and agreeability among a populace that may not share the same values and collective goals? We have to start at the source.

    The problem is that fixing this issue is a long-term project. We’re seeing an ever-growing population of disconnected people living in an economically unequal world. They were raised under development and education policies that saw, treated, and divided them as self-interested workers and consumers who never focused on the community as a whole. Because we have become so divided, we have very little in common. In truth, we’re not going to be united easily. The past cannot be undone, and the true cost of these policies must come out in the end. Building true communities can’t be done overnight; it takes generations of hard work.

    How can we reverse this trend and actually bring people together? The answer is pretty simple: Create a future with smaller communities where people have more in common. Imagine a better future, with smaller and truly democratic sustainable communities that are surrounded by nature. Communities filled with people who all got a fair start in life, with every one of them born and raised in loving homes where they learned from the very beginning how to work together with the people around them.

    Having Kids knows how to get there. We prioritize democracy and community, and we’re creating a culture of smaller families working together to plan a better future for every child. We use something called the Having Kids model to move the world away from isolated families toward a long-term, three-sided focus on the objective interests of parents, children, and the community. Simply put, the model shifts resources that incentivize larger families to instead incentivize smaller families that cooperate to give every child a better start in life. For example, the Having Kids model eliminates child tax credits and other benefits for wealthy families after the first child in order to fund family planning-based early childhood development benefits for families that need them.

    Want to unite people? Focus on long-term change, on children, and on having and raising kids who have more in common than we do.

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  • How Does Family Planning Protect the Environment?

    How Does Family Planning Protect the Environment?

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    How does family planning protect our environment? This is the question researchers at the Worldwatch Institute recently set out to answer. Their findings may provide the key to addressing many of the environmental crises we face today.

    Robert Engelman, project director, found that while their “group assessment of recent scientific literature did not ‘prove’ that family planning promotes environmental sustainability, we found plenty of supporting evidence that it is helpful,” including the effectiveness of increased use of contraception — especially long-acting reversible contraceptives — by young Americans.

    The Family Planning and Environmental Sustainability Assessment (FPESA) provides vital and hard evidence addressing the often-taboo subject of how family planning affects the world’s environments. This information helps support the work of any organization addressing the role of family planning in achieving things like the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change mitigation, the protection of the most at-risk ecosystems, and more.

    As the Assessment suggests, sometimes seemingly unrelated issues — like decisions about creating a family and the future of the world’s environment — are deeply intertwined. Having Kids seeks to make these connections as we work to create a more sustainable future for us all.

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