Fair Start Movement

Category: Race, Class & Human Rights

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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/

  • “Reversing the Gender Imbalance With Male Contraceptives”

    “Reversing the Gender Imbalance With Male Contraceptives”

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    By Erika Mathews

    Earlier this month, The New York Times published an article that made us feminists shake in our boots. “The crisis seems to be cementing traditional gender roles,” the piece read. A poll for the Times found that women with families are bearing the brunt of the increased workload due to coronavirus stay-at-home measures. Even if women earn more than their husbands, the responsibility of housework, childcare, or distance learning for their school-age children tends to fall upon the mother.

    Unfortunately, it may not come as a surprise to many that women in opposite-sex partnerships often disproportionately shoulder certain loads within the partnership. As an example, this has been happening with our bodies in the realm of family planning for millennia.

    The Coronavirus and Inequality

    Given that May is the month back in 1968 that the U.N. declared family planning a human right, it seems fitting to shine light on an opportunity before American society to drill away at outdated gender roles. It’s also an opportunity to tackle the socioeconomic inequality we’ve witnessed the coronavirus expose.

    The opportunity I’m referring to lies in male contraceptives. The challenges around gender parity and socioeconomic inequality that are now staring us in the face amid this pandemic are exactly why Having Kids is calling upon Congress and the National Institute of Health to prioritize the research, development, and deployment of the male pill and other long-acting, reversible male contraceptives — or “LARCs,” for short. 

    Male Birth Control and Greater Equality

    How can LARCs address such longstanding problems so deeply embedded within our society? 

    Research shows that smaller families benefit children and that the economic disadvantage correlated with the alternative tends to perpetuate a greater divide between those with and without. Still, we see the U.S. tax system incentivizing larger families, though incentivizing pregnancy delay may better set up women and future generations for greater equality. 

    Since family planning was declared a human right five decades ago, women have made great strides in terms of physical and economic well-being. Still, nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. today are unintended, which costs taxpayers $15 billion annually. In a few short months, the COVID-19 pandemic has made family planning even more difficult due to lack of access to contraceptives and to reproductive healthcare.

    While the discussion around family planning often centers on abortion, it should go without saying in today’s politically polarized America that any solution propelling us forward — while side-stepping partisan hot spots — should be a no-brainer. This should be baseline territory. Pre-fertilization forms of birth control, a category into which male contraception falls nicely, show promise to be excellent candidates for building bridges across the political aisle. Unfortunately, apart from the “pullout” method and abstinence, women in the U.S. currently have over a dozen options for pregnancy prevention while men have only two: condoms and vasectomies. 

    Why Men Should Take Larger Role in Family Planning

    Recent studies show that American men want the ability to use their bodies to further participate in their right to family planning. While vestiges of a more sexist yesteryear set speed bumps on the track toward deploying more viable male options, we’re incredibly close to breakthroughs in the field, and this is no time to let up on the gas pedal. If fully tested and approved in the U.S., LARC options like RISUG and Contraline could empower men to share more equally in family planning through leveraging their own bodies, helping reverse the trend of traditional gender roles being “cemented.” Our friends at the Male Contraceptive Initiative have outlined several others.

    Again, men want more options to play a larger role in family planning. We women — certainly in our new, less certain reality when fewer couples are opting to get pregnant — could use the support. Ultimately, when communities and parents cooperatively embrace better family planning, we can invest more in every child and create the future we all deserve.

    For these reasons, we at Having Kids call upon the National Institute of Health and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo — chairpeople of congressional committees on health that oversee family planning matters — to increase funding for the research and development of male contraceptives. 

    A variety of safe, commonsense, accessible options, along with communities and parents cooperatively embracing better family planning, are key to providing coming generations the future they deserve. Male LARCs would serve as a huge step forward in getting us there.

    Erika Mathews is the executive director of Having Kids, a U.S.-based non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness for The Fair Start Model, a human rights-based, child-focused approach to family planning. Erika holds a bachelor’s degree in English/Journalism and German from Rutgers University.

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  • Economists to Women: Make More Babies AND Work More

    Economists to Women: Make More Babies AND Work More

    Yesterday, Bloomberg added to the chorus of demographic decline alarmism. This time, the authors don’t even make an attempt at subtlety. “Population growth is vital for the world economy.” Yep, it’s about money.

    Corporate interests exercise influence in the media and over politicians to promote higher fertility. And economists’ solution to the global trend toward smaller families? Put the burden on women to have more children and to work more. As if they don’t shoulder enough already. 

    Family planning, for most of our species’ history, has involved thinking that bigger is better. It’s a patriarchal perspective, showcased by tycoons who push women to have more kids, despite how doing so will exacerbate the climate crisis. More kids mean more consumers, a larger workforce to supply a cheaper labor force, and complaint taxpayers.  

    And for these regressive thinkers, the Earth is still a resource to be divvied up and owned. Big business and big government supporters both love growth and their attack dogs are brutal haters. They are targeting people for simply asking questions about population growth in a presidential town hall. They don’t care about democracy, which has always required smaller communities of highly developed people. For big family supporters, strength, size, and the exploitation of future generations, or power rather than reason, is the goal.

    There is a way out. We can confront this greed and create the freedom that comes with true human rights and democracy. Fair Start family planning does just that. It puts children first and enables would-be parents to raise children in a safe and habitable world. It is the most effective way to improve child welfare, reduce the gap of economic inequity, and protect our environment. In fact, it is ten-to-twenty times more effective than downstream alternatives such as choosing a Prius or a vegan diet. 

    Here’s how it works:  

    Communities ensure that parents have the resources to plan families and guarantee kids a fair start in life. Each of us delay parenthood until we are financially and emotionally ready, and we then choose to have small and sustainable families that put less demand on our shared resources and our world.

    Here’s the best part.

    We are giving all kids a fair start in life AND doing what is most effective to mitigate climate change. It’s a win/win for all, as our world should be! Fair Start planning is a community approach to creating a world we all want to live in for generations to come. 

    Lean more and TAKE ACTION. 

  • Why Do Women Get Pushed to Have Kids? Ask the People Doing It.

    Why Do Women Get Pushed to Have Kids? Ask the People Doing It.

    The science is clear that delaying pregnancy, planning ahead, and working together to invest more in every child is the most effective path towards sustainable development. 

    So why are women still getting asked when they will be having kids?

    The regressive view of women as mothers-in-waiting persists partly because so many public figures are pushing it. 

    Jeff Jacoby is one of the loudest voices pushing women to have more kids, and to thereby accelerate climate change, species extinction, and a host of other ecological ills. And it’s not just about nature. Unsustainable family planning is the hidden cause of social crises as well, from rampant child abuse to growing inequality. 

    So why should women have more kids, according to Jeff, who criticized Meghan and Harry for  declaring they would stop at two kids for environmental reasons? Jeff, who himself only has two kids, had this helpful bit of information:

    The Talmud records that when the enslavement of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt grew unbearable, their leaders advised couples to stop having babies — why raise more children to face a life of slavery? Eventually one of those leaders was persuaded he was wrong, and that childrearing should go on even in the teeth of murderous oppression. So he and his wife had another baby. That baby, named Moses, became the liberator who led his people to freedom.

    Jeff goes on to claim that the solution to population-driven climate change is to create more people in the hopes that one of the children will have a solution to the problem. He then credits population growth for a lot of modern advancements. In reality, progress comes from investing in people, not just creating as many as possible and hoping for the best.

    Not All Women Will Be Mothers 

    Regardless – the point is this: Jeff is ensuring a culture where women are pushed to be mothers. He’s doing it for religious reasons, while hiding behind nonsense arguments, and at a time where doing so is a manifest threat to the welfare and freedom of future generations. That goes beyond free speech to something worse than climate change denial – towards encouraging the exacerbation of a manifest threat to our species.

    Parents who care about their kids should stand up to mouthpieces like Jeff. What does he tell his kids, Caleb and Micah, about climate change? Does he tell them that the destruction of our atmosphere is God’s will? Does he tell them that child abuse, vast inequality, and levels of education that bring down democracies come from above? Jeff should answer these questions. Why? Because he’s forcing his view on your kids future too. What we do now will impact the wellbeing of future generations in ways not seen before.

    Ask Jeff to answer these basic questions by tweeting him at @Jeff_Jacoby or message him on FB at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeff-Jacoby/123656506578, and stand up to the men who push women to have kids, and thereby endanger our future. 

     

  • George Mason Professor Pushes Women to Have More Kids

    George Mason Professor Pushes Women to Have More Kids

    Tyler Cohen is urging women to have more kids as a solution to climate change, despite clear evidence that larger families are the worst way to intensify it.

    His logic?

    To put those worries out of mind, ask yourself a simple question: Is the remedy for climate change, to the extent we find one, more likely to come from North America or New Zealand?  Obviously, the wealthier and more populous America is a more likely source of technological innovation, even though it is also a more significant source of greenhouse gases. So if you think progress in this fight is possible at all, you ought to be betting on the more populous nations. By having more children, you are making your nation more populous — thus boosting its capacity to solve the problem.

    Yes, he’s arguing we should randomly have more kids, and thereby intensify all anthropogenic impacts on the planet (including ocean acidification, mass extinction, increased risk of social conflict and competition for scarcer resources), in the hopes that one child might one day develop a solution. Forget taking more sustainable steps, like encouraging smaller families where children get more individual investment to be better equipped to solve our greatest problems. Let’s just roll the dice, grow our numbers, and hope for the best.

    Tyler Cohen is actually not that stupid. But he is intellectually dishonest. Why would an economics professor who does not appear to have kids himself, make silly arguments like this? Because he and other elites are stuck in a mindset of unsustainable population growth, or the Ponzi scheme of creating wealth and growing economies by simply adding more people. Tyler does not think that randomly having kids – as opposed to improving educational systems – will solve the problem. He just wants you to have more kids because that fuels the unsustainable system, which is designed to hide and externalize its costs, upon which he and so many misguided economists have built their careers.

    Here’s a better idea: Let’s do the most effective thing possible to address all of our ecological and social crises at the same time, and promote smaller, more sustainable families instead.

  • Tell Ivanka to Stop Throwing Women Under the Bus

    Tell Ivanka to Stop Throwing Women Under the Bus

    Ivanka Trump and her three kids were all born wealthy, with privileges in life they did not earn, and a massive head start over people who will never be able to catch up. She and her kids enjoy such advantage in part, because of the tax, family planning and economic policies that enable the rich to become richer while the middle class shrinks.

    Meanwhile, Ivanka and her husband personally lobbied to reducing access to abortion. More importantly, as the President’s Senior Advisor, she had a hand in the sweeping and harmful Title X changes. The changes implemented in February shifted federal funding from organizations that provide birth control, STD screenings and preventative health exams to faith-based and pregnancy crisis centers and abstinence only education.

    family planning
    Results of access to long-acting reversible contraceptive in Colorado. Photo: LARC4CO

    The ability to control the timing and number of children is one of the most critical factors in determining a woman’s empowerment, independence and success. Research indicates that women who delay motherhood and have smaller families are significantly better off economically than their peers who started families at the average age. Smaller families tend to result in a more equal distribution of parental responsibility. Women who have fewer children also tend to have greater decision making power in the household, and are less likely to be drowned out by a spouse or relatives.

    Ivanka is instead advancing policies that ensure a steady stream of poor future laborers, consumers, and taxpayers. Need proof? While she purports to be a champion of women, she recently expressed opposition to a minimum wage increase, stating:

    “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get, so I think this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want.”

    That increase would raise their standard of living and ability for mothers to give kids a fair start. People like her – who live on investments rather than hard work, rely on a future underclass of workers to support her and her family. They feed off the growth that poor family planning creates.

    Infographic with two women: one 15–19 years old, one 20–24. Between 2009–2017, birth and abortion rates dropped 59%/60% for teens, and 35%/41% for young women; 51,427 women benefitted since 2008.
    Photo: LARC4CO

    But there are efforts to counter these regressive policies. Having Kids is part of a coalition of groups in Colorado, LARC4CO, that are pushing for affordable access to effective contraception and other reproductive health services for all women. We just re-upped. Read two key fact sheets about the coalition’s work here and here.

    TAKE ACTION: Tell Ivanka to act like the champion for women she claimed to be and advocate for universal access to family planning services to empower women and give every child a fair start in life. Tweet her at @IvankaTrump.

  • Hungary: Close Borders, Pay Women to Have Big Families

    Hungary: Close Borders, Pay Women to Have Big Families

    The Washington Post recently reported that Hungary is so desperate for kids that mothers of four won’t need to pay income tax. Leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Senator Marco Rubio here at home call for more births to counter demographic declines while at the same time demanding closed borders and blocking migration that could solve that problem.

    Nevermind that it’s undeniably racist. These short-sighted, tribalist, and ill-informed cash for babies schemes are regressive as well. Fertility is not limited to national boundaries. The impact larger families have spill out across the world. We know that we are twelve years from catastrophic climate change. Even accounting for closed borders, the resources used by each person impose a significant strain on the planet.

    Line graph showing world population from 10,000 BCE to 2100. Population remains low until a sharp rise after 1800, reaching over 8 billion in 2020 and projected to reach 11.21 billion by 2100. Economists and the media are just as guilty in the hysteria over declining fertility rates. But the bigger picture shows that there is no shortage of people. World population is projected to grow exponentially, despite the growing trend towards smaller families.

    Shouldn’t we demand modernized thinking of our leaders and see beyond borders to the world we all share? Our kids and future generations are counting on us.

     

    TAKE ACTION
    We can counter the regressive rhetoric. We’re asking the U.N. Secretary-General to recommend smaller families to create a better future for kids. Add your name here.