Category: Child Development & Welfare

Kids shouldn’t be parents. And that’s just one of many reasons to eliminate child marriage.

It’s usually something we associate with far away, theologically governed countries, but child marriage is a problem in the U.S. – and it’s perfectly legal. At least nearly a quarter million minors under the age of 18 were married in the United States between 2000 and 2015, according to Unchained At Last. Some were as young as 10 years old. 

How many U.S. states allow marriage under 18? All 50 of them and the District of Columbia. 25 states have no minimum age whatsoever.

“A 2-year-old technically could marry. A middle school child is allowed to marry [here in Pennsylvania],” Fraidy Reiss, Founder of Unchained At Last explained in an interview last month. Some have called child marriage a loophole for pedophiles. Outside of marriage, sex with a minor is considered rape. But if the perpetrator marries the victim, suddenly it’s legal. The child has been sentenced to a life of exploitation.

Massachusetts and many other states are now grappling with minimum age requirements for marriage. Conservatives are standing by century-old laws under the guise of protecting religious and cultural traditions.

But marriage before age 18 has been called a human rights abuse by our own U.S. State Department. And for good reason. On top of stripping autonomy from minors and allowing them to be sexually abused, there are a number of statistics that show that underage marriage isn’t what politicians romanticize it to be:

And while family planning programs and services aim to help young people delay parenthood, what about those who have parenthood forced upon them though underage marriage? As you might imagine, kids make terrible parents.

The problem with the debate is that our system of human rights and democracy has already settled it. Children should be free to be children. They have rights to bodily and other forms of autonomy and development, with which marriage interferes. They have those rights for their own benefit, and because functional democracies require a level of good parenting that kids cannot provide. Parents who wait until they are ready, have kids with far more successful outcomes.

Kids are the future. Do you really want them raised by other kids?

Take action: Contact Massachusetts Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo and explain why child marriage is a bad idea for our future.

AJ Freund, the five year old, allegedly killed by kids parents is just one of the nearly 5 children who die each day in the U.S. due to abuse and neglect. Despite over well over a century of public policy interventions to stop the abuse, almost 700,000 children in the U.S. are abused each year.

Is it time to get serious about preventing child abuse, rather than responding after the harm has occurred? We know that some people are not ready to become parents. Yet, we stand by and wait for a problem before we act. The truth is that some people – like AJ’s parents – are just not ready. How do we identify parents that might not be ready? Convictions for prior abuse and neglect are a good start. Having Kids has developed model legislation designed to break the myth that everyone is ready to be a parent, and to target child abuse before it begins.

Contact the Governor of Illinois, where AJ died, at 312-814-2121 and ask him to consider calling for Fair Start legislation. You can also start at the top, and urge the United Nations Secretary General to speak out on the need for a universal Fair Start family planning system. It’s time to get serious about preventing child abuse.

On the heels of reports of significant problems inside DC’s child welfare system, and a dangerous shortage of foster parents available in the District, Having Kids is calling for a novel approach to addressing child-welfare. Cory Booker and many others who have proposed “baby bonds” and similar measures to give poor kids the money they need. Having Kids takes that idea a step further, calling on DC to adopt a sustainable guaranteed income for children in the city pegged to better family planning.

Read the full letter here.

The idea is simple: The District can reach many of its goals at once by promoting smaller families so that communities and families can invest more in each child. The policy is centered around every child’s right to a fair start in life, and is designed to address the greatest threats facing the District and nation, including inequality and climate change. Can Washington D.C. make a difference by itself? It can for its residents. But it can also lead by example and set a trend – a line of dominoes – for the rest of the nation with the most effective and sustainable path forward.

The policy urges the District to adopt a stable community model, where the financial resources formerly required to support growth could be directed to other beneficial investments. Rather than focusing on unsustainable economic growth that excludes the most vulnerable citizens from participating, the Having Kids GMI proposal shrinks the wealth gap by ensuring a level playing field from the beginning of life. Specifically, it contemplates (1) household resources per capita, (2) level of access to public services such as health and education, and (3) above all, the relationship between a child’s fair start in life and prospects for success.

Here are the facts: The science of early childhood development shows the disproportionate impact our early years have on the rest of our lives. This holds true, among other things, for economic inequality. Better family planning is by far the best way to reduce inequality. According to Erika Mathews, Having Kids Executive Director, “other interventions are simply too late.”

TAKE ACTION:
Tweet D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, @MayorBowser and ask her to pursue GMI tied to family planning to improve child welfare.

From “Why Did No One Save Gabriel?” published in The Atlantic, October 2nd, 2018.

“Is it normal for your mom to hit you with the part of the belt that has that metal thing on the end?”

“You mean the buckle?” Garcia (his first-grade teacher) asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Is it normal for you to bleed?”

———————–

“Near the end of January, Garcia was reading to a group of students when the door opened. It was Gabriel. This time, the students didn’t laugh. They didn’t understand what they saw. Gabriel’s eyes were swollen, and squinty like a cat’s. Little round bruises dotted his face. Garcia told him to sit down. When she was finally alone with him at recess, she asked what had happened.

“I fell,” he said.

“I don’t believe you, Gabriel,” she said, noting that this was the first time he’d lied to her. She saw the anger swell inside him.

“It’s because my mom shot me in the face with a BB gun!”

“Okay.” She paused, not knowing what to say. “Why did you lie and tell me you fell?”

“When I tell you, and that lady comes, then I get hurt worse.”

Gabriel Fernandez was tortured to death by his mother and her boyfriend.

Nearly five children die every day due to abuse and neglect in the U.S. The system failed to protect a little boy, who despite the cruelty inflicted upon him, still loved his mother. Gabriel’s case is a heartbreaking reminder that downstream solutions are not enough to keep kids safe.

But we cannot let him become another statistic. We must prevent abuse before it happens. Having Kids is the only organization working to stop child abuse through Fair Start orders, which prevent child abusers from having additional children while they are on probation and undergoing rehabilitative programs.

You can prevent this harm inflicted on so many kids with your gift on this Giving Tuesday.

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Today the national child-protection organization Having Kids called upon Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis to adopt a policy of preventing child abusers from having additional children. Together we can end child abuse.

Read the full letter here.

On August 19, 2018, the 4-year daughter of Jacqui Lyne Carter was brought into an emergency room in Jacksonville with severe head trauma. While the child’s mother Carter, told investigators that her daughter had simply hit her head from moving around excitedly in a bouncy chair, a medical examination showed a very different story. A CAT scan revealed multiple skull fractures as well as multiple brain bleeds. Medical reports from the hospital revealed that this young child had both “old and new skull fractures.” This type of skull fracture and brain damage was not from an accidental “bump,” but clearly “indicative of a blow to her head with force.” Even more horrifying, exams revealed not one, but two fractures, indicating at least two separate forceful blows to the girl’s head.

In 2016 alone, Florida Department of Children and Families received more than 225,000 referrals for child abuse and neglect. Even more alarming, there were a staggering 126 fatalities from child abuse and neglect in Florida in 2017 – twice as high as the national average. Florida’s child maltreatment reporting rate has consistently exceeded the national average and Florida is in the top 10 states in the nation for reporting by calculating children investigated per 1,000 children in the general population. In fact, per a study by the SAS Institute that followed a 2005 birth cohort for 10 years, approximately one in every five children born in Florida in 2005 were reported at least once to the child welfare system within 60 months from birth. Florida’s child population has increased by 1.8% from 4,031,098 in 2007 to 4,105,129 in 2015 compared to a 0.5% decrease in the United States’ child population. Florida’s poverty rate for 2015 was 2% higher than the comparable national average.

Having Kids is urging DeSantis to develop policies, and encourage legislation, that enables judges to issue Fair Start Orders. This would allow courts, at the judge’s discretion, to issue an order to prevent offenders in the most egregious child abuse and neglect cases from having children for a limited time period as a condition of his or her probation. Having Kids Executive Director Erika Mathews said this: “We offer child-first Fair Start family planning as a way to actually protect children, by preventing child abuse at the source – poor family planning.” “If we want a better world, we have to start thinking ahead.”

Tweet him at @RonDeSantisFL and ask him to pursue Fair Start policies. 

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A wave of disgraceful headlines have made it clear that we need serious action to prevent child abuse. The following incidents have been reported around the country in the past few weeks:

• A man in Florida, currently on probation for child neglect, is now facing child abuse charges on allegations of tying up his young son at night to prevent him from eating.
• In Pennsylvania, a man has been charged with child abuse after he confessed to likely causing bruising and brain bleeding to a 6-month old child in his care by repeatedly hitting the child on the back when the infant was crying.
• A couple in Missouri was arrested for allegedly keeping four children locked inside small boxes secured with plywood and screws. The children had no access to food, water, restrooms, lights or windows and their home reeked of urine.
• A man in South Dakota was charged with murdering his infant daughter. She was brought to the hospital with head injuries that were “indicative of non-accidental trauma.” The baby died a week after being admitted to the hospital. The same man had previously pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse after his other infant daughter was brought to the hospital with injuries.
• A $20,000 bond was set for a Wisconsin couple who kept kids in makeshift cages.

Sadly, these are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of cases that happen in the United States on an annual basis. Younger children are the most vulnerable, with nearly one-third of abuse happening to children under the age of four. Unsurprisingly, 91% of these abused or neglected children were maltreated by one or both parents. 

We owe kids better than this.

We have a responsibility to prevent child abuse. And the best way to do that is by creating a culture, derived from smart policies, that prevents abusive and neglectful parent from ever having kids. Having Kids is working towards that fundamental change through our Fair Start order campaign. It’s simple: If someone has been convicted of a serious case of child abuse and cannot care for children, they will be ordered not to have additional children until the situation changes.

These orders are a fair and constitutional way to change the way we plan our families based on the child-first Fair Start model. 

It’s time to get proactive, rather than continuing to be reactive. Punishment after the fact is not good enough. We can stop abusive parents from inflicting harm on more kids.

Let’s get ahead of the problem. Take action now and support Fair Start order legislation in your state.