Having Kids is urging families to come together in support of a new family planning model that puts children first and to speak out about their choices. The Sustainable Families campaign promotes smaller and more sustainable families, and a move towards cooperative family planning designed to give every child a fair start in life.
Erika Mathews and her partner have chosen a smaller and more sustainable family, where they can invest more time, love, and energy in their daughter, as well as in their community. Erika and her family are leading by example, and building a better future for all.
The Phelps-Mathews Family
The facts are clear:
- The most effective way to address many of the impacts on our environment and other species, like climate change,is by choosing smaller families. Yes, it’s more effective than changing diet or forms of transportation.
- By 2100 world population could vary by billions of people, depending on whether the average woman in the world today has one child more or one child fewer in her lifetime.
- Our current family planning systems provide no minimum standard of wellbeing for future children, allowing children to be born into failing state systems because their parents cannot care for them. That exacerbates inequality, and ensures rich kids stay rich and poor kids stay poor.
- Child-first family planningprovides a clear human rights-based solution and path forward. It’s sustainable and equitable, and reflected in the worldwide trend towards smaller families that can invest more in each child and ensure a safer future.
Having Kids has come under fire recently for promoting better family planning. The debate over family planning models pits traditional forms of family planning, where some benefit from a growing population, massive inequality and dysfunctional democracies, against everyday families who take a child-first and values-centered approach to having kids. The two models would create vastly different futures, based on whether we use kids to fuel our economy or invest in them.
“Family planning, more than anything else, determines the future,” said Anne Green, Executive Director of Having Kids. “Parents often say they will do anything to protect their kids. If that’s the case they should join us and speak out.”
Interested in becoming a Sustainable Family and speaking out? Write us today at Info@HavingKids.org.
