Fair Start Movement

Category: Family Planning & Child Rights

  • Doesn’t Preventing Child Abuse Start with Family Planning?

    Doesn’t Preventing Child Abuse Start with Family Planning?

    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.

  • Men Pushing Women to Have Kids. Time to Push Back?

    Men Pushing Women to Have Kids. Time to Push Back?

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    Lots of men are getting in on the action of pushing women to have more kids, from the Serbian military which recently vowed that it will “participate in raising the birth rate,” to ball-brained bloggers who decry the impact lower fertility is having on youth sports, to politicians urging women to ignore their futures and hurry up and breed the next generation of taxpayers, consumers, and workers.

     

    Best of all, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to prevent women from not having kids, by pushing back years of progress on access to family planning, and role modeling an unsustainably large and consumptive family.

     

    Our species has, for most of its history, accepted the cultural push for larger families and higher birthrates because it benefited us, as a species. The caveman and patriarchal systems approach to family planning, “just have more,” had some merit. That all changed in roughly the Twentieth Century, when world leaders realized that population growth itself posed a grave threat to our species, and launched family planning interventions that cut worldwide fertility rates in half. Yes, that happened.

     

    There was just one problem – these efforts were based on incomplete information. World leaders in the Twentieth Century did not account for climate change, and a dozen other unforeseen impacts on our social and natural environment, from the acidification of oceans to the massive extinction of other species. They did not account for advancements in the science of childhood development, which today show how family planning impacts the prospects a child has in life, for their entire life. They did not account for how, consistent with those impacts, family planning policies could exacerbate the massive gulf between rich and poor.

     

    In short, the interventions did not go far enough, and certainly did not account for linkages between the issues above, like how better child development policies could have offset humans’ innate cognitive dissonance around slow-moving threats – like climate change.

     

    What does all of this mean? Today, as an already unsustainable world population skyrockets towards eleven billion, the men who are pushing women to have more kids are a manifest threat to all of us, and the wellbeing of our children. Their caveman approach to family planning is not just wrong. It’s dangerous. Instead, we should embrace the clear trend towards lower fertility rates as a form of human evolution, the move towards a sustainable population, families that can invest more resources in each child, and the creation of smaller –  and hence more democratic – communities where each person has more of a voice and role in creating the rules under which they live.

     

    Take action: If you belong to civil society organization, one that protects the environment, children and their futures, democracy and human rights, equality for women, etc. please politely encourage them to consider taking a public stance on the need for better family planning, and encouraging a model that promotes smaller and sustainable families where every child is guaranteed a fair start in life.

     

     

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  • Having Kids Seeks Court Order to Prevent Neglectful Couple from Having Additional Children

    Having Kids Seeks Court Order to Prevent Neglectful Couple from Having Additional Children

    Sharon Helene Robinson and Bradley Dwight Hill of Tennessee have been 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. Excrement was also found in the child’s bed. 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 is petitioning state authorities to seek a Fair Start court order, in the event the couple are 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 also to prevent the neglect of any future children. Having Kids will eventually also call for specific legislation to authorize Fair Start orders in Tennessee. Having Kids is targeting Tennessee because the state is currently considering legislation HB 2520 / SB2133, regarding coercive family planning and sentencing. The model Fair Start order is noncoercive 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 can make clear the state’s compelling interest in the welfare of future children, counteracting any dangerous and inadvertent signal HB 2520 / SB2133 might send.

    Learn more about Fair Start orders and why they can help us change a dysfunctional family planning model based solely on what parents want, to a better family planning model based on what all children need.

    National statistics, despite underreporting, estimate that 1,670 to 1740 children die from parental or caregiver abuse and neglect in the U.S. annually. And many of the perpetrators continue to have and abuse additional children. The recent opioid crisis in the U.S. has only accelerated the problem. State child protection systems around the country are in crisis, with multiple state systems failing and clear linkages to increased child abuse. Foster care cases involving drug-using parents have hit the highest point in more than three decades of record-keeping, accounting for 92,000 children entering the system in 2016, according to data by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

    “If even one fewer child is abused, that represents a better world,” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids. “We can do so much more to protect the most vulnerable.”

    UPDATE: Having Kids has already received a response from Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam. After review of our letter, he forwarded it to Commissioner Hommrich and the Department of Children’s Services. Therefore, Having Kids is now urging supporters to contact Commissioner Hommrich Department of Children’s Services only to respectfully request that action be taken to ensure better family planning that protects parents, children, and the community.

  • Toys R Us Fails To Adapt, Blames Fertility Rates

    Toys R Us Fails To Adapt, Blames Fertility Rates

    In the wake of its bankruptcy announcement, Toys R Us is giving out free family planning advice: Americans, and millennials in particular, are not having enough kids.

    Forget the fact that having large families is the worst way for the average person to exacerbate climate change, otherwise destroy the environment all kids will need to thrive in the future, and lock in the family-based disparity of wealth that is ripping at the fabric of American democracy. What really matters is that Toys R Us exploit more workers to sell more toys, toys that your kids don’t need.

    Toys R Us is worried that smaller families will hurt the U.S. economy. Here’s a thought: The U.S. is meant, primarily, to be a democracy, rather than an economy. What’s the difference? Democracies are by nature smaller, so that each person in them has a voice and plays a role. Their members are not lost in the crowd. Democracies are by nature sustainable, because their future citizens matter. Democracies are made up of free and equal people in whom prior generations have invested much, and right from the start. People in democracies don’t plan families based on how to best sell toys. They plan them based on what children need to thrive as self-determining, free and equal people.

    The move towards smaller families, with parents investing more in each child, represents a move away from the oppressive and unsustainable economies of old towards real democracy, and the end of companies like Toys R Us  – which recently filed for bankruptcy. They should accept the blame for failing to adapt to the 21st century landscape in order to compete with Amazon and other big box and online retailers, rather than pointing the finger at families.

    Toys R Us is wrong on family planning. Tweet @ToysRUs and tell them to stop blaming parents for their business failures.

  • Climate Change Deniers Pushing Larger Families

    Climate Change Deniers Pushing Larger Families

    There’s just one problem. The entire critique can be summarized as follows: Long-term and short-term savings are not the same thing. Yes, that’s true – so what? How would that fact undercut policy prescriptions, which generally use both? Is this article advocating being shortsighted?

    At the end, the author reveals a bit more about why she’d want to critique those studies and the idea of promoting smaller families: Making the shift to smaller families would mean fewer workers in the future, would rob kids of the benefit of many siblings, invite immigration in the future to add to the labor force. What would promoting smaller families mean about how we value children? The author values economic growth driven by using future children as cheap labor over protecting the environment and restoring nature, values the aesthetic of large families (even though studies have debunked the claim that kids fare better with many siblings), does not value immigrants, and values the act of having kids, which is not the same as valuing children. To truly value children, we must ensure they are only born in situations that give them  the resources they need to have a safe and healthy future.

    By launching an attack on the science that shows smaller families are perhaps the best way to respond to climate change, the author declares her position. Yes, policy choices, in the end, come down to values. At Having Kids, we value ensuring that all children are born into a basic level of well being and are given a fair start; that all children can enjoy the natural world and live in a true democracy. Those values, together, support a child-first Fair Start family planning model. Learn more here.

     

     

  • What Do School Shootings Have To Do With Family Planning?

    What Do School Shootings Have To Do With Family Planning?

    Social commentator David Leonhardt is right when he says the teenagers recently killed in Florida “had the misfortune of growing up — of trying to grow up — in a country that didn’t care enough about their lives.”

    He’s also right when he connects the shooting to the seemingly unrelated issue of infant mortality rates in the United States.

    But he might have taken the next logical step, and connected our disvaluing children back to the source – to the dominant parent-first family planning model in the United States, one that allows politicians to openly promote the use of tax incentives to urge women to have more children, children who will serve as workers, consumers and taxpayers to inflate our economy. How can we value children when we will bring them into the world for those reasons, irrespective of the conditions in which they will be born, of whether they will get a fair start in life relative to their peers, and regardless of the impact our collective family planning decisions have on the environment they will inherit?

    The problem Mr. Leonhardt recognizes begins further back in time – in the way we choose to bring children into the world. How do we change that? We can move away from a family planning model that puts parents before kids, towards one that is child first. That change can also begin at the local level. Start the change in your community today.

  • New York Times: Time to Take a Deeper Look at Family Planning?

    New York Times: Time to Take a Deeper Look at Family Planning?

    Leta Hong Fincher’s New York Times piece on China’s family planning regime raises many questions: We decry population growth policies as violating women’s rights and autonomy. Should we also look beyond parents, to future children, and consider their rights to a world free of population-driven climate change and the environmental destruction that typifies massive China today?

    Would such rights limit parents’ autonomy in family planning? China is the bogeyman when it comes to family planning, but isn’t the United States attempting to also use women to produce workers, consumers, and taxpayers for the state? China uses family planning to limit the number of children born into poverty, and that has disparate impact on some families, but if a policy does not independently use genetics or race as a factor, is it eugenics? Could states compensate for that disparity by using equity as baseline for cooperative planning?

    Regardless of how we answer these questions, family planning is morally complex – with immense consequences for more than just parents – and rarely a matter of evil state actors and blameless citizens. The New York Times needs to dig deeper when it covers an issue that, more than anything else, defines the world around us.

  • What Does It Mean to Get a Fair Start In Life?

    What Does It Mean to Get a Fair Start In Life?

    Should every kid born get a college savings account? Is that fair?
    There are great arguments that they should. Don’t all kids deserve equal opportunities in life?
    But could such programs be more effective if connected back to family planning? It’s not like kids, with all their needs, just fall from the sky. We can plan for them. Could the amounts proposed be increased substantially and in proportion to parents contributing sliding-scale percentages themselves, before having their first child?
    The real question is how to fund the transition to true equality. Is there a more important use of society’s resources than investing in its future? As such, do we have a right to those resources – a right that overrides any other claim to them, much the way governments can simply take property for purposes of national defense and other pressing needs? Given the twin threats of climate change and inequality posed by our current failing system of family planning – too many kids and not enough prep, isn’t this a form of national defense if we think long-term?
    Let’s think ahead, and plan for kids before they enter the world.
  • Planning Families With Care and Love

    Planning Families With Care and Love

    Maggie Astor’s article on the thoughtful and caring people forgoing having kids because of climate change raises compelling questions. Should climate change (that even the Pentagon acknowledges) be a reason for the people most concerned about the future stop having kids? Should they do so while others, many of whom deny climate change, continue to have massive families? Do we want a future filled with people raised by those who cared the least about it? Are declining fertility rates an example of our species actually acting to protect itself, and our future, and as such should we be pursuing policies that promote that trend?

    The underlying problem seems to be that our current model of family planning isolates parents in their decision-making, telling them that the act of having a child is nobody else’s business, and thereby preventing collective action and cooperative decision making. Climate change is a good reason, an existential reason about who we should become, to change all of that, and find a better way to work together to plan our families and protect our collective futures.