Category: Responsible Parenting & Smaller Families

The Atlantic has for some time published a thoughtful series of articles analyzing the reasons people decide to have children. It’s unfair to generalize about such a large body of work, but at Having Kids we think there is a sometimes express and usually implied norm in the articles: That each person has for themselves to decide the timing and number of their children, for their own reasons. The question is posed as: Should I have kids? That reflects the near universal norm underlying family planning today, something we call the Isolation Model.

We think that’s the wrong question to ask. When parents ask it they are wondering whether they will be able to provide for their child, whether the future world they will bring their child into will be good enough, how the child will impact their lives etc. But they usually don’t see that the answer to that question depends – most of all – on the collective reasons and actions of everyone in the world making that same decision, and having or not having children. Whether you will provide well enough depends largely on your own family circumstances and background, and the systems – cultural, economic, social, political, etc.  – that will assist you in providing. It’s takes a village, as they say. Your child’s future world will be defined by the qualities and quantity of the people in it, something that is mostly determined by family planning decisions today and in the past. Will a child destroy your freedom? That depends on the level of quality at which you parent, and the help you get in the process, both of which depend on the often subtle systems of family planning and parenting in which we live.

So, the question should not be “should I have kids?” Rather it should be, how should we all plan together to have kids, biologically and otherwise? We can only get what we want, and the future we want for us and for our kids, by working together. One way to do that is to change from the Isolation Model to a collective action model called the Fair Start model. It’s a human-rights based model that’s pretty simple: It treats prospective parents, future children, and the community as equal parties in the process, prioritizes consensual government (or political freedom) as the goal of the process, and models the decisions the parties would make to become free.

But whatever model we choose, climate change means the time for acting in isolation is over. Thoughtless family planning is the greatest threat to our and our kids’ future. And parents don’t take threats to their children lightly, or stand by while governments do nothing. Having Kids will find parents that care enough about the future to take action, and help them shift our systems of family planning to build the future we all want, and deserve.

Today’s paradigmatic demand for reproductive rights, including the rights to contraception and the safe termination of a pregnancy, goes something like this: Men and women have the right to choose the timing and size of their families. And things like President Trump’s recent expansion of the rights of employers to deny women insurance coverage for contraception, as well as his refusal to fund family planning services domestically and abroad, violate these rights.

Is there another way to make the demand for reproductive rights? Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has acknowledged that climate change is a threat to our national security, and studies have shown that choosing a smaller family is the most effective way to mitigate climate change. Moreover, these studies focused simply on emissions, not also factoring in the beneficial effects of creating a smaller, better prepared and more resilient population to match the more challenging environment of the future. Could we make a better demand for reproductive rights based on preventing a recognized threat to our national security?

Here’s another way: If you are a caring person you might feel beleaguered by the constant needs of neglected children, in and out of our communities. Refugees, abused children in failing foster care systems, children living in child-care desserts, children who vitally need federal health insurance, etc. – where did these millions of children come from? Why do we treat children as invisible until they arrive in this world, especially when we now know the disproportionate impact early childhood development has on a person, impacts that last the rest of their lives? Instead of dumping funding and other resources into a cavern of needy children, why not also incentivize parents and communities to work together to plan a fair start in life for every child?

We have to imagine what the world would look like today if parents in the past had waited a few years more to have kids, had fewer kids, and worked with their communities to improve the conditions into which every child had been born. What if all parents had planned for and worked towards things like health insurance, educational savings plans, organized community day care, etc. – all with the help of others who saw family planning for what it is: the future of the world. That proactive view of helping children presupposes rights to things like access to contraception, and the safe termination of a pregnancy. But it bases those rights upon what children need rather than simply upon what parents want. And by focusing on children it also bases the rights on the interests of the community in its future citizens. Who among us really wants to live in communities filled with people raised by parents who did not plan for or want children at the time, but were forced to have and raise kids because they simply could not prevent them?

We can talk about reproductive rights and our right to choose. We can also talk about reproductive rights and climate change, national security, the wellbeing of children, the future of our communities, etc.  Is the latter more compelling?

by Emma Spett

When I (a 23-year-old woman) was asked to write about my perspective on having children, two things were happening in my life: first, I was spending time with a community of folks in their 20s and 30s who were all childless. Second, I had just finished Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, a book by Roy Scranton about the climate crisis and our mortality as a species.

I started talking to the people in my life about having kids, asking what their plans were (if they had any) and what motivated those plans. I also spoke with my parents, who had three children in three years while still in their twenties, about the choices they made while building their family.

Throughout my week of conversations, I allowed Roy Scranton’s theory of humanity’s imminent destruction to inform my perspective. In his book he considers the ways in which we can move towards our demise gracefully, rather than in flames. What does that look like with respect to developing future generations of human beings? Do we want to bring children into this changing world?

Some of my friends expressed wanting kids because it seemed like a natural next step in a relationship. Some felt an inherent desire to be a parent, to carry a child. Some had made the choice long ago not to have children. When I asked my parents about their motivations, they shrugged and said that’s just how it happened.

To me, parenting in the anthropocene means that we must take responsibility for our new role as the primary geological force on earth. What can we do to alleviate our grasp of the world’s natural systems? We can have fewer children, surely. We can encourage the people around us to adopt, to participate in the lives of their friends’ and family’s children, we can encourage smaller families through policies and taxation and education. We can normalize, validate, and celebrate the conscious choice not to have children at all.

I don’t know if I’ll have kids. I’ve always felt motivated by my capacity to do impactful work, which has silenced, for the most part, any desire to devote time and energy to a future family. Additionally, as an environmentalist, I’m cognizant of the challenges we’ll face in the coming years, as humans grapple with our choice to grow without a consciousness of earth’s capacity to provide. It doesn’t feel imperative to me to make a sweeping statement about the choices I’ll make down the line with respect to my family. What is important, though, is to be conscious about how I can reflect my values in those choices.

A recent report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation documented that while many in the US tout “equality” as one of the country’s highest values, there is absolutely no measure by which the next children born in America will have equal opportunities.

The Eugene Register-Guard looked into the statistics for Oregon children living in low-income households. They found that 63% of African-American children, 64% of Native American children, and 67% of Latino children are growing up low-income, compared to 33% of white children. And in answer to those who claim that undocumented immigrants are distorting these numbers, 88% of the children are US citizens, and an additional 7% hold legal status here.

Most politicians claim to be pro-family and pro-children, but statistics like the above show that these claims are, at best, empty. Politicians at every level failing to advance policies that will fundamentally alter our society plans and cares for families.

But our current reality is even worse. At the national level, the Republican-led Congress has failed to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which has provided health coverage for about 9 million low-income children and pregnant women.

So not only are we, as a society, failing children born into a cycle of poverty, we are undermining one of the very few programs that can actually help poor children be born into slightly better situations.

All of these issues – and the many more we feature on the Having Kids’ Facebook page – come about because we refuse to formalize family planning based on every child’s right to a Fair Start. And while some groups do amazing triage work on the inequalities in our society, only Having Kids is willing to address the root cause – our unwillingness as a society to state, unequivocally, that a child’s right to a Fair Start should supersede all other rights.