Fair Start Movement

Tag: Educational Guides & Resources

Kids and Climate Change: What Do We Do?
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Recently, NPR asked a very important question: should we be having kids in the age of climate change? Professors at Johns Hopkins have been asking this question for a very long time. Their conclusion is that we can, but we should significantly limit the number of children we have in order to reduce carbon emissions and give populations susceptible to climate change their best chance.

And that’s what the Having Kids model is all about. It’s about asking smaller families to work together to plan a better future for every child. That means that potential parents should think about their future children and the community that their children will enter. They need to ask the question, “What would give my child, my community, and other children the best quality of life?” They will quickly find that limiting their family size and contributing resources to their community to help create a safe place for their child to grow are the best options, especially in the face of climate change.

The statistics NPR cites on the carbon emissions of large families, relative to other lifestyle choices, are sobering. Below are a few examples of how much carbon dioxide (in metric tons) is saved over a lifetime (80 years) by a typical American for certain actions, including not having one child.

Increase car’s fuel economy from 20 to 30 mpg: 148 tons

Reduce miles driven from 231 to 155 per week: 147 tons

Replace single-glazed windows with energy-efficient windows: 121 tons

Replace ten 75-watt incandescent bulbs with 25-watt energy-efficient lights: 36 tons

Replace old refrigerator with energy-efficient model: 19 tons

Recycle newspapers, magazines, glass, plastic, aluminum and steel cans: 17 tons

Reduce number of children by one (with emissions fixed at 2005 per-capita values): 9,441 tons

Source: “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals” by Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax

For too long, parenting models focused on the choices of the parents without putting them in the context of a larger community. These models didn’t emphasize the needs of future children. Having Kids wants to change the conversation. We want potential parents to think critically about the needs of their child, the world they want to bring their child into, and how they will ensure that world becomes a reality. We want to see a world where the impacts of climate change are prevented, and where every child can be guaranteed a high quality of life.
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August 19, 2016
How Can We Fix America’s Failing School System?

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NPR’s recent in-depth coverage of America’s failing school systems lays out the problem: because school funding is largely based on property taxes, poor communities have poor schools and wealthy communities have good schools. The proposed solution? Reorder funding to eliminate that distinction and to equalize funding between schools.

What’s missing from that solution? We think there are a few more questions to ask. Do poor communities always have to have poor children? What other factors (like an increased risk for having special needs) affect the children of poor families? Why not reorder the funding further back in the process, and have smaller families work together to plan for and invest more in each child? Could Family A plan to have their first child after they have put one thousand dollars into their education fund, in exchange for Families B and C adding ten thousand dollars to that fund, ideally from money those families would have been spent on having more kids and larger families?

Let’s start at the source. Having Kids is all about finding new solutions to old problems.

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May 20, 2016
How Can We Follow in Iran’s Footsteps?
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How do you bring a country’s total fertility rate from 6 to 2.1 children in 20 years? Iran had the answer, and it included education, free contraception, and accessible healthcare clinics for rural and urban areas. In 1970, Iran launched a family planning initiative that had three goals:

Delay a family’s first pregnancy.

Allow more space between births.

Promote smaller families.

Using these tactics, Iran knew could it reduce maternal and child mortality and ensure that families planned for children that they could support. Overall, the program was incredibly successful because sex education was provided broadly to youth, a variety of contraceptives were offered for free, health clinics were established, and there was a cultural shift to accept these family planning tools. In the end, families could plan for the children they wanted to have, and they could ensure that they would have the resources to support those children fully.

However, a few years ago Iran cut their family program, outlawed vasectomies, and created public ad campaigns encouraging couples to have large families. Many groups and individuals are concerned that this will result in a significant increase in unplanned pregnancies, an increase in sexually transmitted infections, a decrease in girls and women pursuing higher education, and fewer families having the means to fully support their offspring. Having Kids believes that this is a turn in the wrong direction and will make it harder for families and the country to support the children who will be born under this policy.
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March 8, 2016
Zika: Why Aren’t We Prepared?

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As the Zika virus spreads and thousands of severely disabled children continue to be born, many are asking why the world is not better prepared. Last week, in a letter published in the New York Times, Having Kids suggested one answer. Traditional models of parenting that isolate parents and treat the act of having kids as an entirely personal matter push directly against society collectively deciding when and in what conditions to bring children into the world. These models have left us unable to help women avoid pregnancies, even in the face of a crisis we should easily be able to avoid. How is it possible that we cannot work together to collectively decide, as a global community, to delay pregnancy in the face of a future generation that will suffer for our inaction? The truth is that collective decision-making about having kids is something the world hasn’t done well – and now, when we really need to do it, we are unable.

What’s the solution? Having Kids moves us from a model that says “you can’t talk about this” to one that asks how we can work together to solve problems. It’s the model that should have been in place before the Zika epidemic. It’s the model that would have helped us face this crisis as a united community, making decisions about the well-being of our future children together. By promoting smaller families working together to invest more in each child, our model focuses on bringing children into the world with a minimum level of well-being and equal opportunities in life. And it doesn’t just help people: It helps heal nature and our ailing democracies. Let’s start to face Zika by changing the way the world thinks about having kids.

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February 3, 2016
What Does Having Kids Mean by Improved Continuity?

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Q: Having Kids refers to improved continuity as the objective value at the heart of the Having Kids model. What does that mean?

A: One of the problems with current parenting models is that they provide no objective value on which to base the decision to have a child. As such, they don’t provide common ground for parents to work together, collectively, to make the best parenting decisions possible. The Having Kids model starts with the most basic human value—the desire for our lives to continue and improve, i.e. improved continuity—and applies it to parenting.

With improved continuity at the core of our decision-making, the reasons we have children change. Following traditional parenting models, parents might validate their decision to have four children by saying that they “value the feeling of a large family” or they “want a child of a certain gender.” With improved continuity at the core, parents will invest more in their first and/or second child to make those children’s lives better than their own lives. And it encourages parents to invest in the first and/or second child of parents in need to help them achieve improved continuity for their own children.

Doing so would improve all children’s lives, give them common ground, and help them eventually work together to shape the best future possible. It would also fulfill what matters most—objectively—to parents: the continuation and improvement of their lives through their children. Improved continuity: It’s part of the Having Kids model of smaller families working together to invest more in each child.

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January 26, 2016
What Do Madonna, Charlize Theron, and Sandra Bullock Have in Common?

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All three stars are parenting adopted children.

In some ways, raising a child is a selfless act, especially when that child isn’t a biological extension of the parent. And while some parents might not see an adopted child as really their “own,” many celebrities and non-celebrities alike would strongly disagree. Adoption: It’s one example of the Having Kids model in action. Smaller families are working together to invest more in each child and provide as much care for the children in this world as we can — for their benefit and for ours.

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January 7, 2016
What if you could help children and parents, protect the environment, and let people be more free and equal, all at the same time?

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You can.

It’s called the Responsible Parenting model, and it’s simple: Smaller families work together to invest more in each child.

For example, parents can use part of the resources they would have spent having a third child to instead connect with and help other parents plan for and invest in a collegiate scholarship trust for their first or second child.

When smaller families connect using the Responsible Parenting model it makes everyone more free. The model frees children by giving them a better start and more opportunities in life, frees parents by giving them more time off while also protecting their children’s future, and frees all of us by building smaller, sustainable, and more connected communities where each person has more of a say in their governments and their lives.

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September 2, 2015