Category: Responsible Parenting & Smaller Families

As Zika Virus Controversy Continues, New Nonprofit Suggests World Leaders, Communities, and Families Change Views on Family Planning
Organization advocates for smaller families working together to plan a better future for every child.

(July 11, 2016) San Francisco —

In Latin America, there are now thousands of cases of babies being born with microcephaly, the debilitating neurological syndrome associated with the Zika virus.

Health officials are advising women to avoid pregnancy until the epidemic passes. There’s just one problem: many countries in this region do not ensure that women have sufficient access to contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and abortion remains essentially illegal. This is not just an issue in Latin America, but is a concern for the United States as well. According to Paul Blumenthal, MD, Zika is expected to spread to Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, where reproductive health care is incredibly difficult to access, especially for low-income families. Zika has brought new urgency to the need to reform family planning systems. However, it raises the question: were we set up to fail in the face of a virus like Zika?

Decades before the Zika outbreak, world leaders came together to define certain fundamental human rights, including parenting rights. They created a rights-based parenting model that treated the choice to have children as one-sided, focused exclusively on parents and their isolated decision-making.

Carter Dillard, founder and president of Having Kids, believes there is a problem with this way of thinking. “We all know parenting cannot be one-sided, because seeing it that way ignores how government policies affect the decisions made by parents, the resources parents have access to and need to support a child, and most importantly, the interests of the children being born into this world and the communities those children are joining,  said Dillard.

According to Having Kids, this one-sided parenting model isolates families, and the cost becomes obvious when society needs to work together to help families delay or prevent pregnancy—as in Latin America or the US—and is unable to do so.

Dillard continues, “We need to think about having kids in terms of the minimum level of well-being each child deserves before being brought into the world, and how families, communities, and countries can work together to meet and raise that level.”

What is the solution? Having Kids suggests that world leaders, businesses, communities and families change the way they talk about human rights and family planning and move from a one-sided model that isolates parents to a three-sided model, which includes the interests of future children, parents, and the community in family planning decisions. It’s about smaller families working together to plan a better future for each child. Dillard concludes that this will “move us from “we can’t talk about this” to “how do we work together to solve this problem.”

Two editorials about population growth in India highlight the massive gap in thinking between two groups: those who want women to add even more children to our crowded and polluted world and those who are focused on making the future safer and happier for all. The first focuses on short-term profits, while the second wants to invest in long-term social development.

The first author argues against smaller families…

Since 1960, the average number of births per woman has fallen from 4.9 to 2.5 worldwide, and even more sharply in emerging countries. In India, it dropped from 5.9 to 2.5. This decline was fueled by rising affluence and education among women, many of whom decided to put off having children to pursue a career, and by aggressive population control policies.

While the second author lauds smaller families:

India’s population growth is falling as incomes grow and social conditions change for the better. In 2013, for example, the poorest and least socially progressive states had the highest fertility rates: Bihar’s was 3.4, Uttar Pradesh (3.1), Madhya Pradesh (2.9) and Rajasthan (2.8). The social condition, educational qualification and employment opportunities of women in these states are appalling. Without exception, these states are economically backward.

But if you read between the lines, you’ll see the debate is not about numbers. It’s about values. The first author is singularly and obsessively focused on gross domestic product and on pumping up the investor class through discredited Ponzi population schemes that try to create short-term profits at long-term costs by simply adding more people to economies rather than actually increasing their productivity. The second author is focused on creating long-term social developments by increasing the well-being of women and children and on putting people over profits.

It’s time to move past shortsighted greed. Having Kids can help.

Its supporters say it’s vital for the U.S. to get behind children’s rights, especially at a time when street children are a common sight and children are not even guaranteed the right to play safely outside. Opponents of ratification say that the U.S. should not be signing and investing in treaties that cannot be enforced and that are merely aspirational.

Is there a solution? One way is to interpret the CRC as requiring conditions that approximate the CRC standards before parents bring children into the world (a process called “temporalizing’), and requiring the requisite shift in resources and access to family planning to help parents. Sound familiar? The Having Kids model effectively does the same thing as we try to plan for the best possible world for us and our children.

A recent study found that women in Portugal have their first child at the age of 30, and one quarter of them don’t expect to have more than one. Unsurprisingly, given those facts, Portugal has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. For those economists who think it’s a good idea to keep fertility rates high to produce a cheaper labor force, this trend is worrisome. But what are some of the reasons women delay having their first child?

Factors that lead to the postponement of having children include the extension of period of studies, delayed entry to the labour market, instability in relationships or the lack of one, delays in leaving the parental home, believing that having children is not essential for personal realisation and believing that it is preferable to have fewer children in order to give them better opportunities.

Are any of these bad reasons? The desire to go to school, the disinclination to have a child in the middle of a bad relationship, wanting to give your child more… these seem sensible to us. What do you think?

New York is leading the nation in many ways when it comes to providing families with methods to help support future children and families. Recently, the state announced its #LeadOnLeave initiative, which will give both men and women three months of paid leave. The program is funded by employees, for employees so that the cost will not fall on the employer. This will give new parents the opportunity to be with their child for the first three months, while the current standard is 0 weeks paid leave.

According to CNN, “The majority of the research surrounding paid leave shows definite benefits to the baby, mother and family, including a decline in infant and maternal mortality, an increase in breast-feeding rates and more involvement by fathers in their children’s lives and in child care activities.” #LeadOnLeave will provide more resources to each child so they can live a higher quality of life overall.

The state has also been at the forefront of combating the Zika Virus to limit potential cases of microcephaly. New York has been providing free testing to individuals who have traveled to countries where the disease is prevalent. By being proactive, the state is ensuring that families can respond to this outbreak effectively and that they can plan when to have children so those future children won’t be affected by the virus.

Because New Yorkers are working together to create resources for families, New York is providing conditions for a high quality of life for the children of the future. New York is thinking critically about having kids and about the future it wants to create for those children. Other communities and states should #LeadOnLeave and provide resources to families for testing for diseases like Zika.