Category: Child Development & Welfare

In an open letter sent today, Having Kids is urging the American Academy of Pediatrics to consider a new policy statement on family planning.

Read the full letter here. 

A recently publicized study in the journal Pediatrics shows that children bear 88 percent of the burden of diseases linked to climate change, which could reverse the progress made over the past 25 years in reducing child mortality. That study follows the prescient policy statement on the need for effective global policy changes to mitigate the impact of climate change.

Having Kids is asking the Academy to adopt and advocate for a new family planning model. Pediatricians can, and should, help lead the most important change to protect our future.

•         The most effective way to address many of the impacts on our environment and other species, like climate change, is by choosing smaller families. Yes, it’s more effective than changing diet or forms of transportation.
•         By 2100 world population could vary by billions of people, depending on whether the average woman in the world today has one child more or one child fewer in her lifetime.
•         Our current family planning systems provide no minimum standard of wellbeing for future children, allowing children to be born into failing state systems because their parents cannot care for them. That exacerbates inequality, and ensures rich kids stay rich and poor kids stay poor.
•        Child-first family planning provides a clear human rights-based solution and path forward. It’s sustainable and equitable, and reflected in the worldwide trend towards smaller families that can invest more in each child and ensure a safer future.

“We stand ready to assist with the development of the Academy’s new policy on family planning,” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids.

Take action: Tweet Dr. Kraft, head of the AAP, at @AAPPres, and politely ask her to consider our request.

This week Having Kids urged officials in Florida to consider a Fair Start order in the event of a conviction of a couple charged with child abuse. Part of the media coverage of Having Kids’ letter included a response by a Florida-based civil rights attorney, Andrea Flynn Mogensen, who expressed concern that a Fair Start order would infringe upon an individual’s constitutional rights, including one’s fundamental right to privacy.

Having Kids agrees that preservation of fundamental rights is important, but all courts recognize that these rights are not unlimited. Specifically, when an individual is convicted of felony offenses, our legal system is rife with examples of limiting constitutional rights – convicted felons lose their right to possess weapons, for example, associate with other convicted felons, and even to vote for certain lengths of time. In fact, Florida is one of only two states in the country that imposes a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record.  

If the legal system is able to put restrictions on certain fundamental rights for convicted felons, the government has the authority to impose narrowly tailored restrictions on the right to have children for those convicted of child abuse or neglect, for the rehabilitation of the parents, and for limited periods of time. Each person’s liberty is restricted by the liberties of others, and when it comes to parenting in the context of a child abuse conviction, we must protect the rights of future children.It’s the most compelling state interest of all – the most important collective concern, because it determines the future.

To address additional points raised by Ms. Mogensen:

• The United States is not the only country with constitutional liberties. But if we want our system of human rights to be the best in the world, we should understand that the right to have children is nuanced and not reducible to the nonsense of “it’s nobody else’s business.” 
• The right to have kids is not unlimited; several high courts have upheld fair start-type probation orders. Ms. Mogensen’s statement that courts are limited to policing pregnant mothers is incorrect.  
• The orders would ideally be authorized by state legislation. If Florida legislators want to protect kids and prevent their abuse, they will sponsor and pass such legislation, permitting judges the legal authority to make such orders in narrow circumstances, where appropriate. 
• There is no legal or moral rationale for ensuring that abusive and/or neglectful parents have more kids while they are being rehabilitated. Doing so puts children into unfit surroundings (either the troubled home or failing child protection systems) and thereby harms them.  

The bottom line is that we, as a society, show ourselves willing to tolerate child abuse and neglect until we embrace limitations like Fair Star orders. Are we really willing to make a policy decision that harms parents, kids, and the community, when we can’t even articulate a concrete reason for doing so? Think about it. Having Kids stands for reason, and for child-first family planning. Join us!

Take action now to prevent, and not just react to, child abuse and neglect.

Since 1983, the month of April has been designated Child Abuse Prevention month in the US. Although there is certainly more awareness about child abuse today – 35 years later – the number of cases of abuse and neglect continues to rise. Having Kids is taking steps to protect children by urging judges to prevent convicted child abuse from having additional children. Even this very clearly defined and limited step is surprisingly controversial, as society currently privileges parents’ “right” to reproduce above what should be every child’s right to be born into even a minimum level of well-being.

Recently, Having Kids targeted parents in a particularly egregious child abuse case in Tennessee for Fair Start orders. Having Kids selected Tennessee because their legislature is considering legislation HB 2520/SB2133, which would limit state courts’ authority from using coercive family planning as part of sentencing. The legislation is a direct response to one judge’s recent and controversial offers of reduced sentencing conditioned on sterilization. This legislation sets one end of the spectrum of state intervention in family planning – what is not permissible – and that is laudable. Permissible and necessary family planning must also be discussed, however. After all, the state has no greater interest than the well-being of its citizens, including its future citizens.

Having Kids asked Tennessee Governor Haslam to consider working with the legislature to protect future children from abuse, using its existing and constitutionally approved probationary authority. Sharon Helene Robinson and Bradley Dwight Hill stand accused of criminal child neglect after their severely autistic child was found naked, and covered in both human and dog feces, which he was eating. The police reported: “Ms. Robinson stated that she is a meth user and this also contributed to her not caring for her autistic son.”

Having Kids petitioned state authorities to seek a Fair Start court order, in the event the couple is convicted, temporarily prohibiting them from having additional children during the pendency of any probation, in order to facilitate the couple’s rehabilitation and recovery, and, more importantly, to prevent the neglect of any future children.

Having Kids is targeting Tennessee because of what HB 2520/SB2133 expressly says regarding coercive family planning and sentencing, and the broader and problematic message it sends regarding family planning, in general. The model Fair Start order is non-coercive and seeks to strike a balance between the rights of parents and the needs of future children and the community. The charges against Robinson and Hill show a clear need for that balance, and Fair Start orders make clear the state’s compelling interest in the welfare of future children. We must not allow child abusers to create more of their own victims; Fair Start orders represent a clear and constitutionally appropriate step forward.

Ultimately, a better future for all means reforming family planning to focus on the child, first and foremost, to give every child a fair start in life. Please join us in this work for a better future for all. 

April is Child Abuse Prevention month and in the United States the situation is bleak.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2015 at least 683,000 children were abused or or neglected.  1,670 of those kids died.  At the same time, multiple state child welfare systems are failing, in part because of the opioid epidemic, which greatly contributes to the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care.

But numbers alone don’t tell the real story.

This week, a national story broke about a Tennessee couple facing criminal charges after allegedly abusing a nine year-old girl in their care, including urging her to kill herself, forcing her to drink water out of the toilet, and making her sleep in the bathtub.  Investigations began after the hungry girl tried to steal food from one of her teachers.  Court records suggest the treatment is consistent with torture.  This comes on the heels of the notorious Turpin family case in Perris, California, where a couple is alleged to have tortured thirteen siblings, over a span of years, in a literal house of horrors.  That case followed thousands before it, an endless sea of abuse, as far back as we can see and with no end in sight.  Child abuse is like a river – children flow downstream, marked with what they have been through in life, if they survive at all, and all we think all we can do is pluck them out of the river one by one and try to care for them.

Last week, in the wake of story after story of horrible child abuse across the country, Having Kids, a national organization focused on reforming family planning, tried something new.  Child abuse is a national epidemic, and our child welfare systems are simply insufficient – offering a level of care none of us would think fitting for our own children.  And yet by not reforming our family planning systems, we are literally and senselessly pushing kids through those miserable systems.

Rather than just react to a case of child abuse by demanding punishment for the abusers, Having Kids called on the governor of Tennessee to seek a judicial order in an effort to protect children before the abuse ever occurs.  In the case in question, a couple stands accused of severe long-term neglect of their autistic child.  Having Kids called for a judicial order (called a Fair Start order) that would temporarily prohibit the couple, in the event they are convicted, from having additional children.

The point was clear:  It’s time for a new rule.  Child abusers should not have children until they can be rehabilitated.  That waiting period protects kids, helps the parents, and alleviates pressure on failing state systems.  It’s a win-win, one that takes seriously the ideas of prevention, and that each child deserves at least a minimum level of wellbeing before they arrive in the world. Fair Start orders are part of what Having Kids calls the Fair Start family planning model. It has three steps: We all help parents wait, plan, and be ready before they have kids. We also help them get the resources they need, and have a right to, to give their kids a fair start in life, by reforming family planning, tax, child protection and social development policies, as well as the culture of parenting those policies have created.  We ease this process by helping to promote smaller, sustainable and more equitable families where we can all invest more of what matters in each child, right from the start.

There was pushback from some who said the move to institute a judicial Fair Start order in the Tennessee case threatened to violate parents’ moral and legal right to have kids.  Is that true?  Is there a right to have kids in a home where we know there is a history of abuse and neglect, where doing so endangers children, interferes with the parents’ own beneficial rehabilitation, and threatens to burden already failing state systems?  To put the victim of child abuse back in a home with abusers before they are rehabilitated seems outrageous.  Why should we, as a society, accept allowing a new victim to be born into that environment during this time period?  Who benefits from such a limitless right?  Who would argue for such a thing?

The case in Tennessee against the couple accused of neglecting their autistic child is still pending, and the state may or may not take action.  Regardless, a new approach to ending the sea of child abuse has emerged, and the question of whether we are willing – as a country – to do what it takes remains to be seen.