Many supporters have questioned why Having Kids wrote to the royal couple Prince William and Kate Middleton to ask that they publicly choose a smaller and more sustainable family. We also requested that they use their public choice as an opportunity to encourage and help other families give their own children a fairer start in life. Our supporters have wondered whether a larger royal family is really the problem and whether our efforts would be better directed towards regions with higher birth rates and levels of infant mortality.

Having Kids is focusing on the royal family because:

1. Given their public stature, they can lead by example to impact family planning decisions around the world.
2. The impact the wealthiest families have on the environment dwarfs the impact of children born in the developing world.
3. Given exponential growth, large families – wherever they may be – are simply not sustainable.
4. The royal family has the resources to cooperatively incentivize other families to plan a fairer start for their own children.  

The most important part of our ask, however, is for the couple to engage in a child-centered form of family-planning based on objective values. None of us can continue to embrace the unsustainable, subjective, and parent-centered model, which has created the troubled world we live in today. If every one of us were to choose a smaller family, and to also work with other families to plan a fair start in life for their children, the world would be a much better place. We owe it to our children to make that change.

And the best way to do that is by working together, agreeing that: “If you plan a smaller family with more investment in each child, we’ll do the same. We’ll also help each other whenever we can.” That is the Fair Start model.

At Having Kids:

We promote and protect every child’s right to a fair start in life by replacing unsustainable, parent-centered family planning models with the human rights-based and child-centered Fair Start family planning model. The model suggests a shift in family planning from a subjective focus on just the parents, to an objective focus that considers the interests of the potential child, the parents, and the community.

It’s all about this: Smaller families working together to give every child a fair start in life.

Today many families are adopting the Fair Start family planning model. First, they try to give their child a fair start in life by having a smaller family where they can invest more in their child. Often they also foster or adopt one of the many children eagerly waiting for parents rather than creating additional need. Second, they publicly role model their choices. Finally, these families join public advocacy campaigns to shift resources from extractive centers of power like governments, corporations, and wealthy families in order to democratically empower children and future citizens by incentivizing better family planning by all parents. Why? All parents know that the quality of their own child’s life will depend on how other parents decide to have and raise their kids.