Fair Start Movement

Category: Social Justice & Equity

  • What is the Fair Start Reproductive Justice Revolution?

    What is the Fair Start Reproductive Justice Revolution?

    Because intergenerational justice makes us who we should be, it is inevitably the first and overriding obligation, or that which first constitutes just communities and enables our consent to the power others would have over us.

    Therefore no system, law or policy is legitimate if it does not first promote minimum levels of wellbeing and equity at birth for children, as well as their development for, and inclusion into as adults, self-determining democracies situated in biodiverse and regenerative environments where each of their voices will be politically influential. Any law, policy or system that does not first do these interconnected things – providing children an eco-social Fair Start in life – violates human rights, prevents consensual/inclusive governance, promotes preconstitutional systems of oppression, and is a threat to freedom.

    We ensure intergenerational justice by eliminating, through discourse and praxis, a line of myths which act as barriers.

    A four-panel meme showing brain images that progressively light up as the captions advance: from denying global warming, to recognizing overconsumption, to choosing a smaller family, to advocating for future children’s needs.

    Myths: The right to have children, as a personal and private matter, allows parents unlimited discretion to have children. Some are born wealthy and others poor, as a matter of magical fortune, rather than human decision-making.

    Truth: The idea that the right to have children is self-determining of parents more than other-determining of children is a misinterpretation of the right foisted on us by colonially-minded patriarchs designed to evade our equity-building collective obligation to children, and to maintain population growth as a means of exploiting future generations as consumers, cheap future labors, and compliant taxpayer. Like all rights the right to have children is limited, collective in nature, and base on the needs of future children whose interests are inherently greater than parental interests. Applying those limits – to level the playing field for all kids – can have ten to twenty times the mitigating impact on the crises we face today, including climate, inequity, and child poverty, and would protect the most numerous and vulnerable categories of entities: Future generations and nonhuman entities.

    Myth: Social justice organizations in the fields of equality, human rights, child welfare, environmental and animal protection accounted for the impacts of family planning policies on their missions.

    Fact: Most organizations ignored the impacts of poor family planning and population growth on their missions, and instead mislead supporters, donors, and the general public, something that enabled many of the crises we face today.

    Myth: Intergenerational concepts are too vague to apply in law, policy and practical ethics.

    Truth: Every normative claim uses implied or express pronouns (“pregnant pronouns”) that – because they refer to people – implicate Fair Start and can be modified to promote it. If a claim involves people, it involves a position on Fair Start, which can be achieved in most parts of the world through enacting specific thresholds for 1) parental readiness before having kids, 2) distributions to give all kids a fair start in life, and 3)  smaller and sustainable families. Together these moves represent relative self-determination, or the limitation and decentralization of power.

    Myth: The written constitutions of nations, subject to some international law constraints, are the dominant set of rules under which we must live.

    Truth: The most fundamental and overriding law is that which creates us, or physically constitutes – through procreation and parenting – our communities. That law overrides things like property rights, which would interfere with Fair Start. That law is what most accounts for our lived experience, and should, if we believe that governance derives from sovereign people. Moreover, power is not simply centered in the violence of the state, but includes subtle things like bad parenting and climate emissions, and its borders are represented by actual groups of people, not artificial lines on maps. Those borders can be divided into free people, and people who refuse to further children’s rights to an eco-social Fair Start in life that would allow them to constitute just democratic communities, or precons. The fight for freedom lies at that border.

    Myth: The things people value, and the market demand they create, are naturally occurring and justify free markets over democracy.

    Truth: Valuation, demand and population growth were created by poor and unsustainable family planning that ensured no minimum levels of welfare for children, abysmal levels of education, extreme inequity ensuring cheap labor, and bloated nation-states where the average person had no real voice in political outcomes. Businesses today profit from a system that mass produced consumers instead of developing capable, and truly free, citizens.

    Infographic titled Better Family Planning, Simply Put with icons and three points: Delaying parenthood, smaller families, and community support, each explained with brief text and blue graphics.
  • Anti-Asian Racism. What’s the Long-Run Fix?

    Anti-Asian Racism. What’s the Long-Run Fix?

    Anti-Asian racism and violence – especially against women – is on the rise.

    What happened in Atlanta is acute, but not isolated. While many organizations, including Having Kids, condemn these acts it’s crucial to find a grounded solution beyond the fleeting reactions of politicians.

    Here is one long-run fix. If racism – and most “isms” – fundamentally arise from humans’ tendency to “other” and degrade people that are not part of their in-group, we need ways to make groups of people more inclusive. Historically government has tried to do that by eliminating formal discrimination, like laws that treated certain races as inferior. This had limited effect. More recently, efforts have focused on structural racism beyond the laws, like changing the way language and other representations can reinforce beliefs about racial inferiority.

    Can we go further?

    Infographic explaining the Having Kids Model: communities invest in children’s futures, parents plan smaller families, and all children benefit from increased resources and a supportive environment. Includes illustrations and text.

    Whether we are part of an in-group, how we perceive others to be related to that group, whether we are really in that group in terms of having an influential voice, etc. – all of these things fundamentally rely on our creation and the family planning norms that determine it. What if instead of ignoring how parents create future generations, we designed systems so that everyone belonged and had a voice? That might work better than simply creating lots of people, jamming them into outdated and massive nation states to maximize economic growth, and simply hoping for good social outcomes that will not happen.

    We can fix this. Help Having Kids create truly inclusive communities where we all belong. Take action.

  • International Women’s Day: Fight for Every Child’s Right to a Fair Start in Life

    International Women’s Day: Fight for Every Child’s Right to a Fair Start in Life

    Today is International Women’s Day, but for many women around the world there is little reason to celebrate. Constant discrimination is bad enough, but women are also subject to incredible violence throughout the world and in every aspect of their lives.

    The figures are staggering.

    If we are serious about elevating women, we won’t just change what we are doing in the short term, but will also focus on changing who we are as people. We will become a people incapable of the atrocities we commit today. Good family planning and parenting play a massive role in that betterment. It’s the change that really matters. But it will take reforms at the highest levels of governance to make the real change happen.

    kids climate change

    Right now both the United Nations and the Biden administration are failing miserably in this process, and instead of developing future generations around an ethic of care that would protect women, both remain locked in an antiquated and patriarchal system that pushes women to have children in order to grow economies. The systems they use isolate families and subject women to the promise of familial autonomy, which in the reality of our world becomes a license for men to simply subjugate them in private. The parent-focused (read men-focused) family planning policies guarantee future children no levels of wellbeing, no equal opportunities in life, no safe and natural environment, and no real and effective voice in their democracies.

    We can help all women, now and all those who will live in the future, by treating every child’s right to an ecologically and socially fair start in life as the overriding human right, and switching to a child-focused form of family planning.

    Take action: Urge the United Nations, and the Biden administration, to finally embrace the fact that every child has a right to a Fair Start in life. We will use their own children a benchmarks for what fairness means as we begin to fight for the rights of the most vulnerable.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The Fair Start Revolution: Taking Power From the Top to Empower Future Generations

    The Fair Start Revolution: Taking Power From the Top to Empower Future Generations

    Elon’s Musk’s Starlink satellites are creating massive sky pollution and ruining stargazing; his commercial interests are creating “space graffiti” in the night sky and obstructing astronomers’ observations. Can we solve this problem in a way that could apply to other scenarios — such as the climate crisis — in which the uber-wealthy and dysfunctional governments work together to destroy nature and threaten our kids’ futures? These incursions into nature interfere with our being free from others’ power, and their subtlety does not make them any less wrong than more obvious forms of oppression. It’s more proof that Musk, who recently doubled down on his assertion that women must have kids in order to support the economy, is not an environmentalist as much as he is a car and space tourism manufacturer.

    At the most fundamental level, this process of propping up the world economy involves a population pyramid in which a few people exploit population growth, fueled by poor family planning, as an engine to convert nature and the nonhuman world into their own wealth. One fundamental solution involves simply reversing that stream: We should agree that two correlative human rights — everyone’s right to nature and children’s right to a fair start in life — supersede the property rights of wealthy people like Musk. The solution involves seeing the right to be born into the world as a free and equal person as the first human right. And it requires using that foundational right to rebase our constitutions on people, not property.

    As we constantly reconstitute societies through the act of having kids, we have a right and an obligation to recycle the resources at the top, and the raw power over others they represent, to constantly generate nature, equity, and democracy where each voice matters. And there now exist clear policy ideas — like Fair Start baby bonds — to ensure that mankind most effectively uses those resources to empower future generations. The few at the top, who are literally hiding the stars from our view, can’t have power over us if we don’t give it to them.

    Take action: Urge Musk to support Fair Start family planning reforms.

    A split infographic comparing Current Family Planning with no minimum welfare, equality, or environmental protection, and Fair Start Family Planning with minimum welfare, equality of opportunity, and strong environmental protection.
    A vision for comprehensive family planning reforms

  • Urge Time Magazine to See Falling Fertility As An Opportunity, Not A Crisis

    Urge Time Magazine to See Falling Fertility As An Opportunity, Not A Crisis

    Time recently highlighted the issue of changing fertility rates as a harbinger of a new era for the United States. But the author, Eliana dockterman, errs in thinking changing our old ways, where unsustainable population growth meant free money in the form of new bodies inflating gross domestic product, is a bad thing.

    Falling fertility rates are part of the overall trend towards population stabilization and gender equity, some of the greatest successes of our time. 

    It’s key in this process that we stabilize at a sustainable level – and given the climate crisis (which Docketerman never mentions) – we need smaller families to hit a safe level and we need them now. Delayed fertility and smaller families are one of the greatest ways to mitigate climate emissions. As we change average family sizes  and get over our addiction to growth, we are presented with another opportunity. Can we use new family planning policies to eliminate other crises, like the economic disparity, where the average black family has one tenth the wealth of the average white family in the United States?

    Yes we can, through policies designed to distribute wealth in ways designed to give every child a fair start in life.  Growth had to end sometime – hopefully it’s not too late. 

    Take action: Urge Time’s editor, Edward Felsenthan (@efelsenthal) to talk about better ways of planning our families that can make a brighter future for all.

  • Why Good Family Planning Is the First Human Right and Responsibility

    Why Good Family Planning Is the First Human Right and Responsibility

    Do the family planning policies in your country ensure all children receive what they need to succeed and a fair start in life relative to other kids? Do they ensure that the child will have a meaningful democratic role in making the rules under which they live, and the freedom and security of the natural world around them? If not, then those policies and the governments that push them are fundamentally illegitimate, or “preconstitutional,” and the people may reverse the violations by all means effective.

    This is the claim Having Kids researchers recently published the Willamette Law Review, and the article is now suggested reading on the influential Legal Theory Blog administered by Georgetown law professor Larry Solum. In short? For people to be free, their governments have to be legitimate; to be legitimate, governments have to be inclusive of the people they claim to represent; and to be inclusive, they first have to comprehensively account (from a logical baseline) for each child, as well as the conditions in which that child is born, develops, and becomes able to meaningfully participate in democracy. In other words, family planning policies have to limit and intergenerationally decentralize the power each of us exerts over one another. Those policies have to free us from one another.

    TAKE ACTION: The United Nations was designed to protect international peace and security, in part by protecting human rights. Instead, leadership there has promoted the interests of illegitimate governments that exploit, rather than invest in, future generations. Urge them to reverse course and do the right thing: https://fairstartmovement.org/uncandobetter/