Fair Start Movement

Category: Family Planning & Child Rights

  • Having Kids in the New York Times: The Zika Virus and Family Planning

    Having Kids in the New York Times: The Zika Virus and Family Planning

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    Piper Hoffman, Having Kids’ executive director, has a letter to the editor in today’s New York Times on the Zika virus and family planning. Hoffman writes in response to a NYT article about El Salvador health officials advising women not to get pregnant until 2018 to avoid infant brain damage caused by the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Here’s her letter in its entirety:

    One theme is clear in “El Salvador’s Advice on Zika Virus: Don’t Have Babies” (front page, Jan. 26). El Salvador’s advice that women should abstain from pregnancy for two years to avoid having children born with microcephaly, a rare condition in which babies have unusually small heads, is shocking.

    But isn’t it more shocking to feel compelled to have children in the face of a growing mosquito-borne epidemic likely to cause them severe brain damage? The surprise in your article stems from historical parenting models that discourage parents from working together to maximize the well-being of future generations by deciding when and how to bring them into this world.

    If we care about children, we’ll move away from these models. Supporting El Salvador’s move to work collectively to avoid severe brain damage in children would be a start.

    This is what Having Kids is all about: thinking critically about how and when to have children and how to best support the children we do have. El Salvador’s family planning approach moves from a one-sided perspective on parenting (based solely on parental desire) to a three-sided perspective that also includes the future child’s wellbeing and the family’s impact on others. The outraged reaction among rights groups over what was advice from the government, not a mandate, highlights just how ingrained the traditional parenting model is.

    We can change that.

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  • What Does Having Kids Mean by Improved Continuity?

    What Does Having Kids Mean by Improved Continuity?

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    Q: Having Kids refers to improved continuity as the objective value at the heart of the Having Kids model. What does that mean?

    A: One of the problems with current parenting models is that they provide no objective value on which to base the decision to have a child. As such, they don’t provide common ground for parents to work together, collectively, to make the best parenting decisions possible.  The Having Kids model starts with the most basic human value—the desire for our lives to continue and improve, i.e. improved continuity—and applies it to parenting.

    With improved continuity at the core of our decision-making, the reasons we have children change. Following traditional parenting models, parents might validate their decision to have four children by saying that they “value the feeling of a large family” or they “want a child of a certain gender.” With improved continuity at the core, parents will invest more in their first and/or second child to make those children’s lives better than their own lives. And it encourages parents to invest in the first and/or second child of parents in need to help them achieve improved continuity for their own children.

    Doing so would improve all children’s lives, give them common ground, and help them eventually work together to shape the best future possible. It would also fulfill what matters most—objectively—to parents: the continuation and improvement of their lives through their children. Improved continuity: It’s part of the Having Kids model of smaller families working together to invest more in each child.

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  • The Oceans Our Kids Will Play In: Hot, Acidic, and Empty?

    The Oceans Our Kids Will Play In: Hot, Acidic, and Empty?

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    We hear a lot about rising temperatures over land as our planet’s atmosphere continues to degrade, in large part thanks to a population headed towards ten billion people by 2050. But the fact is that our oceans are in many ways ground zero for climate change. They’ve continued to warm and become more acidic after absorbing much of the heat and carbon dioxide caused by human growth. New studies also show that, while the oceans themselves are changing, the fishing industry worldwide is decimating whole fisheries to feed the world’s growing population. Yet in the face of all of this change, some are pushing for even larger families and even more consumption:

    The UN population division’s latest work on low-fertility and aging is eye popping and is meant to inform policy makers about their options. It includes ominous predictions about economic and social ills and shows how the crisis is most acute in countries that are poorest. “Population aging must be understood and addressed by all countries,” John Wilmoth, the lead demographer at the UN Population Division, said at a gathering at UN headquarters in November.

    At Having Kids we value our oceans, nature, and a safe, clean, and healthy future for children over the unsustainable and population-fueled economic growth that has lead us where we are today. It’s time to move towards a better model of parenting and to stand against those whose greed threatens our oceans, our children, and our future.

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  • See World Population Growth Over Centuries

    See World Population Growth Over Centuries

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    An impressive GIF shows what world population looked like in 1800, 1900, and 2000, as well as what the United Nations projects for 2100. Here’s what Vox had to say about this population growth:

    Between 1900 and 2000, the size of the global population skyrocketed (from 1.7 to 6.1 billion), mostly in the developing world — Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. This reflects huge victories in global development and the spread of economic growth and technology previously reserved for Europe and North America. Once again, this has geopolitical significance: Being larger and richer gives countries more resources to draw on in international politics. We’re talking about the rise of countries like China and India today for a reason.

    Being larger and richer may seem like a benefit to nations, but what about the people actually living in them? A basic principle of international development called the demographic dividend suggests that smaller families, not growth, promote development.

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  • Family Planning Dynamics & the Having Kids Model

    Family Planning Dynamics & the Having Kids Model

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    The story of families in Tanzania provides a great example of how family planning efforts — if fully funded — could protect women, children, and the environment all at the same time.

    Tanzania is a large country; it’s about the size of Texas and Colorado combined. Tanzania’s population is quite young: as of 2014, 45% of the population was under the age of 15. It’s the 6th most populated country in Africa, with 52.3 million people. By 2030—only 15 years from now—the population is projected to rise to 79.4 million, and by 2050, unless the birth rate slows substantially, there will be 2.5 times as many people in Tanzania as there are today, 129.4 million, which would make it the 15th largest country in the world.

    What is driving the rapid population increase? Only 26% of married women use modern contraception, compared with 53% next door in Kenya. In the Kigoma region of western Tanzania, the rate falls to 14%, among the lowest in the world. Forty one percent of women in Kigoma have an unmet need for contraception. The total fertility rate in western Tanzania is 7.1, among the very highest in the world. Having babies in rapid succession is often accompanied by high maternal mortality. There is an urgent need to make voluntary contraception more available in places like rural western Tanzania so that women and their families are able to live healthier, productive lives and space and plan their families.

    How can we strengthen demands for increased funding of contraception beyond the plea to simply make it “accessible?” Perhaps it’s time to embrace an objective and universal model of smaller families working together to invest more in each child, rather than traditional and subjective models that do not address family size, community involvement, and minimum standards of wellbeing and equality for future children.

    It’s not just countries like Tanzania that need this change — all of our futures depend on it.

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  • Growth and the Quantity-Quality Trade-off

    Growth and the Quantity-Quality Trade-off

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    A recent study suggests that with every additional child, other siblings are more likely to suffer from lower cognitive abilities, more behavioral issues, and worse outcomes later in life. This research builds on prior evidence that there is a significant trade-off between quantity and quality when it comes to family size. The “quantity-quality” trade-off, as it has been called, can have dramatic impacts throughout a child’s life, such as less education, lower earnings, and increased risk for teenage pregnancies and criminal behavior. If this is true, why are some leaders still pushing for larger families? Maybe it’s time to revisit growth policies that are designed to make infinitely “stronger” economies and nations at real costs to the people actually living in them.
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  • Switching Off Sperm: the Future of Male Contraception?

    Switching Off Sperm: the Future of Male Contraception?

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    Research is underway on a new device that would allow men to control their fertility by literally flicking a switch. Given that a recent study confirmed that a whopping forty percent of pregnancies worldwide are unplanned, this kind of male contraception could have a dramatic impact. Besides affecting parental and child wellbeing, it would have long-reaching effects on the health of our environment. What might the world have looked like today if something as simple as a “switch” had been available decades ago?

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  • What Do Madonna, Charlize Theron, and Sandra Bullock Have in Common?

    What Do Madonna, Charlize Theron, and Sandra Bullock Have in Common?

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    All three stars are parenting adopted children.

    In some ways, raising a child is a selfless act, especially when that child isn’t a biological extension of the parent. And while some parents might not see an adopted child as really their “own,” many celebrities and non-celebrities alike would strongly disagree. Adoption: It’s one example of the Having Kids model in action. Smaller families are working together to invest more in each child and provide as much care for the children in this world as we can — for their benefit and for ours.

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  • Mixed Messages on Climate Change & Unsustainable Growth

    Mixed Messages on Climate Change & Unsustainable Growth

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    We’re hearing mixed messages about the state of our planet and the people on it. On the one hand, census reports show that the United States, which is struggling to deal with its current carbon footprint in order to protect future generations from climate change, will become a lot more crowded in years to come. Yet some thought leaders in Washington are pushing for faster growth “because it will help us sustain our labor force” and “increase consumer demand for lots of products that young people and young adults and young householders need.” 

    Businesses may benefit in the short term from a growing supply of workers competing against each other for jobs and long lines of customers to buy their goods and services, but the long term effects are much less clear. The approach raises many questions and highlights the mixed messages we’re receiving. Doesn’t this growth make it harder to mitigate climate change, which is already a major issue? Does having more kids mean less time and energy will be invested in each child? How does crowding affect kids’ quality of life, the connection between people and their community, their connection to nature, and our ability to work together to define the future? Are we all better off, in the long run, with small families working together to invest more in each child?

    These are important questions, and they need answering. Let’s start the conversation

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