Fair Start Movement

Category: Responsible Parenting & Smaller Families

  • Want Democracy for Your Kids? Do this.

    Want Democracy for Your Kids? Do this.

    When supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol Building in January, business leaders, and prominent members of both political parties, condemned the act as a direct assault on democracy. The deadly attack was wrong for many reasons, but not because the Capitol represents a functional democracy.

    It’s hard to understand why anyone believes Congress – a handful of people – could democratically represent the diverse and changing interests of the hundreds of millions of people that live in the United States. If democracy is characterized by self-rule or the decentralization of power, what Congress purports to do instead is run a large republic where powerful interests disproportionately control outcomes, rather than engage in the true democracy simply characterized by an extremely decentralized system of local control where each person’s voice matters and is heard.

    We react strongly to the spectacle of what happened at the Capitol in part because it is sensational. Decades of corporate lobbyists invading the Capitol and slowly degrading the way it represents each person equally – and especially those most vulnerable – is less sensational. It’s not better – in many ways it’s worse and more impactful – but our brains don’t process it the same way. (In the linked TED talk Peter Singer focuses on our welfare and our cognitive limits, but the same lesson could be applied to self-determination and democracy).

    While contrasts have been drawn between the police response to the attack versus the response to the George Floyd riots, we can also look to the disproportionate response police had to the Occupy movement, especially in Wall Street’s back yard. We may not be surprised then when the captains of corporate America swiftly condemned the attack on the Capitol. Violence reminds us that there is a form of power other than money.

    If we really wish to ensure justice and to prevent further bloodshed, perhaps we should focus on making each voice heard and matter – whether it is the sort dying to end the constant killings of deeply disenfranchised black men by police, or the sort of voice intent on protesting the federal governance of our massive and deeply unequal population as undemocratic. If we don’t, these voices will raise their level of conflict, and violence.

    Infographic compares two groups: one large, gray crowd labeled People Without Real Say by the government, and one small, colorful group labeled Smaller & Better Democracies. Text suggests smaller families improve democracy.

    How could we possibly increase each person’s role in governance? Traditionally our moderately federalized system pushes population growth as a means of expanding national power, then based on constitutional rules, it counts up everyone and apportions their representatives. Instead of exploiting future generations as a means of growth, what if we changed the way we have and raise kids to equitably invest more in them and in ways designed to give each a voice in hyper-decentralized future governance? Instead of assuming that the written Constitution magically ensures our representation, we could physically decentralize both private and public concentrations of power by taking resources and investing them in a smaller future population developed for self-rule. While that process must prioritize eliminating racial inequity, it is inherently nonpartisan.

    In this way, we could begin to constitute democracies out of people, more than out of words, and build communities around our role in planning them, more than around racial or class identities. We could incentivize early fostering and adoption of children in need using the funds – like child tax credits – that currently incentivize having larger families. We could also do it by redistributing wealth from the top of the economic pyramid through enhanced “baby bond” legislation meant to ensure birth equity and tie future children’s needs to better family planning. Giving a voice  – in this way – can mean giving what both margins, left and right, want respectively, albeit over the span of a few generations: Greater equity for the former, and greater autonomy for the latter.

    The best part? If developing future generations to engage in equal self-rule is something that logically precedes the political processes we are accustomed to, we don’t need the government to begin the decentralization of private and public power. We can instead join as liberals and conservatives to target the power of both big business and big government, which in divided political camps we respectively object to, based on the simple truths that every child deserves to get a fair start – both ecologically and socially – in life, and that every child deserves to eventually matter in the processes that govern their day to day lives.

    They have that first human right, and as their protectors, we may ensure it for them by all means effective.

    Take action: Urge you representatives in Congress to support the United America campaign.

  • Nudging Cal Flyn, a Brilliant Mind, on Family Planning Reform

    Cal Flyn is wise to call attention to the issues of population growth and family planning is her recent article in the Guardian.

    What matters more than the people with whom we and our kids share the world, and will in the future?

    Cal however could be making a simple, but crucial, error: She might be assuming that replacement is the baseline for determining family planning policies and ideal fertility rates. Given that current and anticipated population levels are unsustainable – something the climate crisis reminds us of every day – replacement is not ideal.

    Instead, there is an optimal world population range – probably well below the ecocidal levels we see today. How do we know what is optimal? Think of what you value: Nature, democracy, fairness, and love. Those values create a world very different from the future we get from trying to maximize gross domestic product. These values create the world thoughtful and caring parents want for their children.

    Line graph showing global population (in billions) and CO2 (relative) from 1800 to 2050. Both lines rise slowly at first, then sharply increase around 1950, with population slightly above CO2 in recent decades.

    Moving towards it is the fundamental policy focus for sustainable development. Moving quickly will prove ten to twenty times more effective at eliminating poverty, inequity, and ecological crises, as well as restoring democracy, than downstream and after-the-fact alternatives. Optimal, not unsustainable replacement, is our collective endeavor.

    As part of this process, the slow return of nature is the long-expected consequence of decades of unified international efforts to avert the disasters that flow from overpopulation. We should welcome the change as a symbol of success. It is part of saving our own species.

    What’s an easy way to actually make change? Mixing fertility delay incentives in with child tax credits, and making all of it steeply progressive to ensure all kids a Fair Start in life.

    TAKE ACTION: BY NOT ENSURING ALL KIDS AN ECO-SOCIAL FAIR START IN LIFE THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL @ANTONIOGUTTERES IS IGNORING HUMAN RIGHTS. URGE HIM TO CHANGE COURSE.

  • Time for Antiracism in Biden’s Family Plan? It’s Called the Unite America Plan.

    Time for Antiracism in Biden’s Family Plan? It’s Called the Unite America Plan.

    We Should Level the Playing Field for All Kids. Full Stop.

    President Joe Biden has put forth a massive child care and tax proposal to keep child care centers open, help low-income families with child care, and offer tax relief on the cost of having kids.

    There is just one problem: It’s not really meant to eliminate the massive wealth gap between minority and white families in the United States. Because of slavery and historical injustice, black families have one tenth the wealth of white families. White families also possess more than 4 times the income of Hispanic/Latino families. The impacts are especially hard on kids, rippling forward into future generations in never ending cycles that make a mockery of any legitimate form of social contract. It’s time to get real.

    How could Biden’s plan help end the cycle?

    1) Cut all benefits to wealthy families who don’t need the funding. 

    2) Use those savings as cash incentives to power up family planning and early childhood investment systems in the United States to 

    a) target child abuse by amending the federal child abuse law, 

    b) incentivize delaying having kids until parents are really ready, and 

    c) promote more sustainable and equitable families for all regardless of income, as well as fostering and adoption – changes that have twenty times the impact on climate emissions, relative to short term fixes. Those changes – made as part of recognizing our sacred constitutional right to nature –  would create massive long-run savings and catalyze sustainable development. We could start to give all kids a Fair Start in life.

    d) Back programs like Smart Beginnings up in time to focus on family planning, and based upon redistribution of wealth in ways that give all kids a Fair Start in life.

    Cory Booker has already proposed a vehicle called baby bonds through which – if made progressively scaled and seriously bumped up – the modernizing changes could be accomplished.

    Opponents to these changes will want to use President Biden’s plan to reinforce inequality and incentivize unsustainable population growth, using babies to grow the economy. Names like Ivanka Trump, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and growth-minded people at Vox like Matthew Yglesias want to use child care, and especially child tax credits, as incentives for women to have kids to reverse falling birth rates. That’s short-sighted, and ignores every child’s right to a socially and ecologically #fairstart in life. It’s certainly not antiracist. It divides us.

    Changing the way we plan for and invest in families – doing it in a socially and ecologically sustainable way – is thinking ahead and creating long-run change. The impacts would be ten to twenty times other things we could do to address the climate, inequity, and decline of democracy crises. Better family planning also has a massive impact on pandemics, improving our response and reducing risks. It’s time to raise the baseline for conditions at birth to set kids up for success for life and build a better future by recognizing the obligations of those at the top. That’s how we come together – or deliberately include future generations in democratic communities – and truly unite America around a common core. We rebuild Main Street by creating a middle class through future generations, at cost to Wall Street and through the elimination of poor and unsustainable family planning.

    In this way we can proceed from fundamental values, and achieve the personal autonomy the political right values, by applying the equity the political left values – but specifically prioritizing children. We can take power away from big business and big government, the entities the left and right respectively oppose, and invest it in future generations. Learn more here.

    That’s truly uniting, and being antiracist, at the same time.

    The Having Kids Unite America campaign is not simply a Green New Deal – it’s a Real Deal, or a new and intergenerational social contract to ensure a #fairstart in life for all kids.

    TAKE ACTION: Add your name to urge President Biden to improve the child care rescue package and share the campaign with the hashtag #UniteAmericaforkids.

  • Share your story. Make an impact. Join the Fair Start movement.

    Share your story. Make an impact. Join the Fair Start movement.

    Logo
    The biggest impact of all? Changing the way we plan families.
    Make a difference today by sharing your “why” for taking part in the Fair Start movement, and we might use your video in our campaigns:

    • Record a 10- to 30-second video clip of you sharing why we need to rethink family planning policy to finally end child abuse and advocate for smaller families to protect our planet and wildlife.• Share your video on social media by using the hashtag #FairStartStories
  • In a Country Divided, Can Our Children Unite Us? Take Action.

    In a Country Divided, Can Our Children Unite Us? Take Action.

    Whatever rhetoric comes from President-elect Joe Biden, the country remains more divided because of the election, with studies showing a growing divide and distrust between red and blue communities and increasing openness to violence on both sides. The impact of the second wave of Covid-19 on businesses, the continued killing of black men and women by police, and a former president soon unhindered by office, will not help.

    Biden is pursuing a business-as-usual approach to funding childcare that makes the situation worse long-term. This policy does not address the root of the problem: family planning. It does not ensure a minimum threshold under which children should not be born, does not address the way unsustainable family size drives the climate and other crises, and does not create inclusive communities.

    Why are your tax dollars being paid out without these safeguards?

    It’s a cliché to say that children, who are the future, can unite us. But novel policies that could change the way we plan for, have, and raise kids make the possibility of coming together real and meaningful beyond empty clichés. Those policies begin by our realizing that being truly inclusive starts by deliberately including children in communities through more cooperative family planning systems that eliminate marginalization, and ​focus as a priority on giving every child a fair start in life​.

    Those policies would also have to promote smaller families that create more democratic communities where everyone’s voice matters. This would be a stark reversal of our ​current family tax policies that promote quantity over quality, ignore fair starts in life, and promote the antithesis of inclusivity​.

    The best part? Such #fairstart policies should appeal to both liberals and conservatives, because they promote the traditionally liberal value of equity while also promoting the traditionally conservative value of autonomy by investing more in kids in ways that make them self-sufficient and capable citizens. Together, these values create a vision of free and equal people engaged in the self-rule the founders of the nation envisioned, or the ideal of town halls, rather than a vision of economic growth that through overcrowding and lack of a common core excludes people from public institutions.

    Moreover, new family planning policies like these would have a massive impact on the climate crisis that threatens all of us, with ​an exponentially greater impact​ than many downstream alternatives. ​Family planning reform is the only truly fundamental type of reform, and given the climate crisis, fundamental reform is what we need.

    Children can unite us, but to make that statement mean something, we have to start at the beginning, with the way we plan families. We have to start with a vision of a future of smaller, sustainable, and truly democratic communities where we invest more in kids and where all have a meaningful voice.

    Take Action: Urge Kamala Harris to use her position to educate Biden and to promote child-centric Fair Start family planning reforms. Copy and paste this message in your communications with her.

  • You and Your Kids Have a Right To Nature. Take Action.

    You and Your Kids Have a Right To Nature. Take Action.

    While many nations’ constitutions are clear in protecting the property rights of the wealthy, they are less clear in protecting the nature we and future generations need to thrive. That’s a mistake.

    Given that humans need nature to survive, we have a right to nature’s restoration and protection. A lawsuit in the United States is making that case, and will be heard in 2021.

    A recent Ecowatch piece covered the appeal, and why no political system that fails to protect a right to nature is legitimate.

    Here is an excerpt:

    “The world made [a] baseline mistake in developing environmental policy decades ago, choosing to treat nature as a resource for humans. The baseline was too low and allowed policies that fell short; indeed, it is one of the reasons our planet continues to superheat. We are making that same mistake now with regard to COVID-19, by financially stimulating factory farming and other forms of ecocide that degrade the buffer (or social distancing) between people that our pre-Anthropocene environment offered. Degrading that “natural buffer” exacerbates the risk of pandemics and determines how we can react to them. As the New Republic reported, the next pandemic could be hiding in the Arctic permafrost.

    Solving the baseline problem will allow us to trace these calamities — like the unfolding death of the Great Barrier Reef — and help us back to an ultimate source, and, perhaps, to a solution. We can no longer use a baseline for environmental policy that treats nature or the nonhuman world as a human resource. This is the baseline most environmentalists use, and the one that created the Anthropocene era in which we find the world today. A much higher baseline would view nature as something that ought to be a nonhuman habitat or the homes of sentient species who have a right to survive and thrive. This would be a restorative baseline, and the one more consistent with animal liberation. Such a baseline would be most protective against things like climate change and the pandemics it drives. A policy based on this baseline would revolve around ensuring our children have the only environment proven — over millennia‚ that allows humans and all species to thrive. It would seek to eliminate the way the absence of nature in our lives is degrading our psyches.”

    Take action: Urge Congress to get ahead of courts and recognize our fundamental right to nature.

    A map of the U.S. with text stating it would take four Earths to provide enough resources if everyone lived like Americans, shown with four Earth icons below the map.

  • Giving To Help Kids, Animals, the Environment, or Democracy? Help Them All At Once Instead

    Giving To Help Kids, Animals, the Environment, or Democracy? Help Them All At Once Instead

    Social movements that try to protect kids, animals, the environment, and democracy tend to see themselves as distinct, and even conflicting. That’s a huge mistake. The most impactful way to further the core missions of all movements lies in making a simple change: Restructure family planning policies, universally, by 1) promoting delayed parenthood, so that people are ready to actually parent, 2) prioritizing giving all kids a Fair Start in life in any political system of resource and stakeholder redistribution, and 3) encouraging smaller families for all, something which helps enable and pay for the first two moves.

    A circular infographic titled “Fertility Delay Incentives to Planning” shows a leaf in the center with four benefits: Delayed Parenthood, Better Family Planning, Guaranteed Minimum Income, and Equal Opportunity & Education for all kids.

    For all four social movements the long-term impacts of changing the way we plan families is incomparable. In other words, long-term thinking, change, and work pays off.

    So who would be oppose this transition? Big business and big government both thrive on poor family planning, because it creates a wave of consumers, cheap future labor, and taxpayers. Both use growth to increase and concentrate their power, at cost to the development of individuals, real democracy where every voice matters, and nature. The solution? Social justice movements can unify against these concentrations of power, finding reasonable allies on both the political left and the right, who want effective reform that furthers our widely shared values, the decentralization of power, and our actually reaching sustainable development goals. Want more information? Our peer-reviewed white paper on family planning reform can be found here. 

    Want to help with this unification of social justice movements against the concentrations of power? Please consider donating to HavingKids.org, or signing up to volunteer at info@fairstartmovement.org.

  • Kate Middleton Speaks for Children’s Rights to Equal Starts in Life

    Kate Middleton Speaks for Children’s Rights to Equal Starts in Life

    Kate Middleton is speaking out, urging the world to recognize that all children deserve an equal start in life. Unveiling the results of a U.K. survey on attitudes about children’s early years, she said work on the importance of early childhood should be regarded equally alongside the other most crucial social issues of our era. She argues that the early childhood years are key to shaping the rest of each child’s lives and our broader societal outcomes.

    The work she advocates is a far cry from the outdated standard still used by the United Nations, the United States, and many other countries that ignore child welfare in favor of focusing on parental autonomy (and in so many cases, exclusively male autonomy). Given that children have the most at stake, shouldn’t our family planning systems be based on their needs? Other mothers are speaking out, too. See a recent video of one mom’s plea here.

    This move makes Kate a leader on the issue of family planning reform. The bold statement brings her into closer alignment with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who also recently spoke out.

    The move, prompted in part by Kate’s “early years” work, could not come soon enough. Children in Britain and around the world are sinking deeper into an abyss of pandemic, poverty, and ecological crisis. Kate’s move is also step toward Having Kids‘ mission of promoting every child’s right to a Fair Start in life as the dominant human right, overriding anything with which it would conflict.

    Kate’s Truth

    We cannot help kids without changing the conditions into which they are born. That means we must change the policies that control way we all plan for and raise kids. Kate knows this hard truth and is not afraid to speak out. Kudos to her. It’s time for the United Nations to make the same move and to start urging member nations to come into compliance with human rights requirements. This summer for World Population Day, Having Kids will bring to the United Nations secretary general the demands of a growing coalition of organizations.

    TAKE ACTION:

    If you support any organization that claims to help children, animals, the environment, and/or human rights and democracy, reason with them as to why their mission is impossible without embracing family planning reform, and strongly urge them to join our coalition by contacting us at Carter@HavingKids.org.

    Learn more about the transition from parent-focused to child-focused Fair Start family planning policies at HavingKids.org.

    A comparison chart showing Current Family Planning with no minimum welfare, equality, or environmental protection, versus Fair Start Family Planning with welfare for all kids, equal opportunity, and strong environmental protection.
  • Having Kids: From 2020 Into 2021, Doing the Most Good

    Having Kids: From 2020 Into 2021, Doing the Most Good

    Want to make the world a better place? Nothing has a greater impact than universal policy reforms incentivizing smaller and more equitable families cooperatively investing more time, love, attention, and resources into every child.

    Current policies were designed with motivations to fuel the economy, not provide for child welfare, and these policies have fueled the crises we face today. In order to boost markets and economies, they have incentivized growth that has filled the world with billions of people and has led to climate change and the sixth mass extinction. By contrast, Fair Start policies promote equity and human rights, developing people for democratic communities, and maintaining the natural world for future generations.

    Enjoy this presentation detailing what we mean by the Fair Start revolution and how it is the best way to reach world sustainable development goals.

    Nothing will do as much good as improving family planning policies to shift the focus from what Wall Street wants now to what all future children need. It’s the first human right and obligation, it demands the collective intergenerational obligations most countries and the United Nations seek to avoid, and Having Kids is helping to make it a reality. With Fair Start, we aim to stabilize human populations at the United Nations low variant before 2100 through a qualitative transition focused on intergenerational human rights and self-determination, defined by a fair start in life for all kids.

    In 2020, Having Kids, with an almost all volunteer staff and minuscule budget, made real strides:

    What Do We Have Planned for 2021?

    As demonstrated in 2020, Having Kids acts as a “part replacer,” finding unsustainable and inequitable family planning modeling in systems of governance, discourse, corporatism, and culture, and replacing it with truly human rights-based Fair Start modeling. We are the praxis, more than simply an organization, of moving the way we all plan families from a focus on adults to a focus on future children.

    For 2021, Having Kids has eight specific objectives, or key performance indicators, to further the overwhelming and quantified impact of better family planning.

    • We will persuade more companies to speak out for sustainable and equitable family planning improvements, including those we are in negotiations with now.
    • In partnership with a Having Kids legislative fund, we will introduce our first legislation, improving popular “baby bond” bills to instead incentivize families working together to give all kids a Fair Start, socially and ecologically.
    • We will file our first litigation, challenging intrusions on the right to terminate one’s pregnancy not as a violation of personal autonomy, but of the collective obligations we all owe future children.
    • We will target a wealthy family responsible for the climate crisis to urge them to compensate future generations by funding Fair Start family reform, and speak the truth to their power that this lexically primary obligation overrides all property rights. We will also focus on recidivist child abusers, from all parts of the economic spectrum, to urge them to admit the need for family planning reform.
    • We will submit proposed legislative and regulatory proposals that prioritize approval and accessibility of the male birth control pill, with policy reforms that treat contraception as the default for all teens. Kids should not be having or raising kids.
    • We will target investors supporting companies that promote unsustainable family planning policies that further inequity and ecocide.
    • We will expand our coalition of organizations, urging the U.N. secretary general and other U.N. leaders to admit that current family planning modeling is a failure, undercutting sustainable development and human rights.
    • We will initiate a #factcheck function on our platforms to correct misinformation in the media regarding the impact of population growth, and we will file actions against civil society organizations misleading donors with claims of progress that do not account for the overwhelming impacts caused by poor family planning and growth.

    How can you help? Please consider donating now. No other change is as effective, comprehensive, or fundamental.



    Thank you,

    The Team at Having Kids

    Infographic explaining the Having Kids Model: Communities invest in families, parents plan smaller families, and all children benefit from improved resources and a fairer society. Includes icons of neighborhoods and a family.