Fair Start Movement

Category: Responsible Parenting & Smaller Families

  • The Evans Family

    The Evans Family

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    The decision to have one child was initially difficult. It became easier as I spoke with other families who had multiple children. I made a decision to focus my resources on one rather than have them compete. By making this decision, I have made a step towards a better life for my child and the community. The Having Kids model is consistent with my belief that change starts at home. Connecting with other like-minded people ensures a better world for my children and grandchildren. Becoming a parent has made me want to connect with others to prompt change. The Having Kids model provides me with a way to accomplish these goals.

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  • Have Kids, Don’t Have Kids… Is There a Third Choice?

    Have Kids, Don’t Have Kids… Is There a Third Choice?

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    New York Magazine deserves credit for publicizing the science of family planning decision-making while also lauding the growing social acceptability of not having children. But what if there’s a third choice?

    Despite the recent findings that having kids might be harmful to your self-esteem, it’s pretty safe to say that American culture is “pronatalist:” As soon as you graduate college, start a career, and find a long-term partner, the next level of the video game called life is parenthood. Whether it’s your mom asking about would-be grandkids over the holidays or the endless parade of domestic sitcoms, there’s an agreed-upon assumption that “family” includes children, and that not having kids must be the result of infertility or just not getting around to it (yet). But these expectations are at odds with changes in the way people are living. From the 1970s to the 2000s, the number of childless women in the U.S. nearly doubled, and national data suggests that 15 percent of women and 24 percent of men hit 40 without having kids.

    But the article and underlying study might be missing an important point by narrowly focusing on the all-or-nothing dichotomy of having or not having children.

    What if there were a third choice, where people could choose to help raise the next generation — with whom they will share the world — without being sucked into the hip-locked commitment of helicopter parenting or age-group isolation of child-free social groups? What if family planning and parenting were something we all did collectively through sharing time, love, attention, and resources? What if we wanted to do this, given the impact that parenting future generations has on all of us? Would that change our choices about parenting? One possibility is that many more would choose to parent via this community model, and that future generations would benefit from the massive investment that choice would create.

    The Having Kids model is all about embracing this third choice,and you can be a part of it.

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  • Kids and Climate Change: What Do We Do?

    Kids and Climate Change: What Do We Do?

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    Recently, NPR asked a very important question: should we be having kids in the age of climate change? Professors at Johns Hopkins have been asking this question for a very long time. Their conclusion is that we can, but we should significantly limit the number of children we have in order to reduce carbon emissions and give populations susceptible to climate change their best chance.

    And that’s what the Having Kids model is all about. It’s about asking smaller families to work together to plan a better future for every child. That means that potential parents should think about their future children and the community that their children will enter. They need to ask the question, “What would give my child, my community, and other children the best quality of life?” They will quickly find that limiting their family size and contributing resources to their community to help create a safe place for their child to grow are the best options, especially in the face of climate change.

    The statistics NPR cites on the carbon emissions of large families, relative to other lifestyle choices, are sobering. Below are a few examples of how much carbon dioxide (in metric tons) is saved over a lifetime (80 years) by a typical American for certain actions, including not having one child.

    • Increase car’s fuel economy from 20 to 30 mpg: 148 tons
    • Reduce miles driven from 231 to 155 per week: 147 tons
    • Replace single-glazed windows with energy-efficient windows: 121 tons
    • Replace ten 75-watt incandescent bulbs with 25-watt energy-efficient lights: 36 tons
    • Replace old refrigerator with energy-efficient model: 19 tons
    • Recycle newspapers, magazines, glass, plastic, aluminum and steel cans: 17 tons
    • Reduce number of children by one (with emissions fixed at 2005 per-capita values): 9,441 tons

    Source: “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals” by Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax

    For too long, parenting models focused on the choices of the parents without putting them in the context of a larger community. These models didn’t emphasize the needs of future children. Having Kids wants to change the conversation. We want potential parents to think critically about the needs of their child, the world they want to bring their child into, and how they will ensure that world becomes a reality. We want to see a world where the impacts of climate change are prevented, and where every child can be guaranteed a high quality of life.

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  • NPR Almost Gets it Right on Helping Kids Succeed

    NPR Almost Gets it Right on Helping Kids Succeed

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    “’Helping Children Succeed’ Starts At Birth; A Case For The Power Of Nurture” is a compelling review of Paul Tough’s new book, Helping Children Succeed. The article makes two points very clear:

    1. The environments in which children live and develop can both diminish and enhance certain noncognitive skills all children need to succeed in their lives.
    2. The diminishing and enhancing of noncognitive skills starts to happen well before children get to school, and continues in their home lives outside of school.

    Here’s a snippet:

    Let’s talk about the home environment for a minute. The ages zero to 5, and especially zero to 3, are traditionally outside the scope of education policy, and yet you spend a good deal of time talking about them. Why?

    There’s this big disconnect in how we think about education in general and this solid body of research that shows how important these early years are. We’ve known for a while that the foundations of reading and math skills, number sense, are laid in early childhood. And it’s becoming really clear that the most important foundations are on this emotional level.

    The back and forth that children and parents have, the level of fear and stress in the community, how parents manage stress and deal with it, it matters in ways we can measure very precisely at the neurobiological level. And we also know that you can change it.

    But the discussion falls short, eventually turning to and focusing on later-in-life solutions like school reform.

    And that misses the point. The most important potential change in policy starts at the source, and it involves legal, corporate, and grassroots reforms that change the way we fundamentally think about parenting and having kids. It requires getting to the point where we can finally admit that there are conditions in which no child should be born. And it requires us acknowledging that the first step to helping children starts with clear and definite models for family planning.

    In other words, helping children doesn’t start at birth. It starts well before children are born.

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  • One Kid or Two? There’s a Big Difference.

    One Kid or Two? There’s a Big Difference.

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    Edward Christophersen, PhD, a psychologist at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, recently wrote about the difference between having one kid and having two. Christophersen found that having one child often allowed mothers to retain part of their own lives, but that that became much harder after the second child. And actor Tamera Mowry provided first-hand experience when she discussed the additional challenges brought on by having a second child, describing the experience as being “in the trenches.”

    What do you think — is having one child a way for parents to really have it all, to be a parent while still having a life?

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  • Think Los Angeles Is a Sprawl? Just Wait.

    Think Los Angeles Is a Sprawl? Just Wait.

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    In one year, California — already notorious for its climate altering stand-still traffic — added 39.3 million residents. 

    The city of Los Angeles reached 4 million people and led the state with 12,224 new multi-family units. Hasan Ikhrata, executive director for the Southern California Association of Governments, sees trouble on the horizon. “What should be alarming to leaders is that our housing is not keeping up with the growth,” Ikhrata said. “We have one of the worst housing affordability rates in the country.” L.A. is becoming more crowded, with worse traffic and pollution, and less affordable housing. It’s time to rethink our parenting models so we can avoid situations like this.

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  • Families with Children: Creating Segregation?

    Families with Children: Creating Segregation?

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    A recent study by University of Southern California professor Ann Owens shows that families with children are driving economic segregation in the U.S. This is happening in large part because they flock to neighborhoods with the best schools, leaving less wealthy parents in sub-standard school districts. 

    Owens says that “the increase in residential income segregation occurred entirely among families with children, for whom income segregation rose by about 20 percent.”

    What’s the solution? According to Owens, possible solutions include more low-income housing and breaking the residential and school district link.

    But what if we could start to break the inequality even earlier in the process? The fact is that all children deserve a fair start in life. The only way to give them that start is by shifting resources early on and focusing on equalizing the conditions in which they are born. Let’s start at the source. 

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  • Having Kids and the Colorado LARC Program

    Having Kids and the Colorado LARC Program

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    Colorado has made unique progress against teen pregnancy in the past few years. It’s mostly due to a cutting-edge program that provides long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), like IUDs, to teens and young women. That program has almost halved teen abortions in the state, according to the New York Times.

    Having Kids is proud to have been part of the coalition of organizations that secured continued funding for this program in 2016, when Governor John Hickenlooper signed a state budget providing for an additional $2.5 million for the successful initiative. That amount will save the state the many more millions of dollars it would have spent on programs for teen mothers. It’s one of the best returns on investment any government can make.

    Having Kids is also proud because LARC programming reflects the Having Kids model. The simple truth is that children should not be parents. In general, they cannot offer their kids the good parenting skills, well-being, and fair start in life all children deserve. As we move from a one-sided model focused on teen parent choice to a three-part model focused on the objective interests of parents, children, and the community, we’re also moving towards a better world. By helping teens wait to parent and engaging in good family planning, we’re benefiting everyone — not just kids and their parents.

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  • On World Population Day, Let’s Talk about Parenting

    On World Population Day, Let’s Talk about Parenting

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    Today, on World Population Day, the news will be filled with talk of the world’s population, projected growth rates, growth economics, and more — all focused on numbers.

    Numbers are an easy way to quantify population changes. The world is on course to reach roughly 11 billion people in 2100, 4 billion more than there are today. However, numbers cannot describe or explain why a child in one part of a community does not have the same access to healthcare, education, and a safe and clean environment as another child in the same community. Numbers do not explain why the United States, which makes up 5% of the global population, uses more than 20% of the world’s energy resources. And numbers do not illustrate the current challenges families face in planning for their children with little to no support from the communities around them.

    When we think about population, most of us are concerned about how increasing global population is hurting our environment, how we are not able to provide a lifestyle of luxury to all, and, generally, how there are too many people for very few resources. Having Kids wants you to think differently about population. We want you to think about parenting as a shared task, where individuals and a community come together to help future and current generations by thinking about resource distribution, redefining standards for a high quality of life, and supporting parents who are planning for their families. It’s about smaller families working together to plan a better future for every child. It’s the Having Kids Model.

    Throughout history, and today, major human institutions around the world have used an old and outdated one-sided parenting model focused on parents rather than a three-sided model that includes parents, children, and the community.

    There’s a big difference between the two.

    The old model:

    • Parents plan their families alone, without working with others and with whatever limited resources they have.
    • There is no minimum standard of well-being for future children.
    • There is no standard of fairness for future children — some are born poor and some are born rich.
    • There is no thought given to how our family planning impacts the community or the environment.

    The new model:

    • Families work together to plan for and invest in the children they will have.
    • Family plans include minimum standards of well-being for future children, pegged in part to the idea of a fair start in life relative to other children.
    • Family plans include considerations of how to build the communities we want, and how to protect and even improve the natural environment around us.

    In the months to come, Having Kids will be urging both the United States and the United Nations to abandon the old model of parenting in favor of the Having Kids model. Please join us.

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