Scan the news after this divisive U.S. election and you’ll hear calls to unite the country after threats and violence erupt across the nation. As heart-warming as those calls to unite may be, what can be done to truly create real commonalities and agreeability among a populace that may not share the same values and collective goals? We have to start at the source.
The problem is that fixing this issue is a long-term project. We’re seeing an ever-growing population of disconnected people living in an economically unequal world. They were raised under development and education policies that saw, treated, and divided them as self-interested workers and consumers who never focused on the community as a whole. Because we have become so divided, we have very little in common. In truth, we’re not going to be united easily. The past cannot be undone, and the true cost of these policies must come out in the end. Building true communities can’t be done overnight; it takes generations of hard work.
How can we reverse this trend and actually bring people together? The answer is pretty simple: Create a future with smaller communities where people have more in common. Imagine a better future, with smaller and truly democratic sustainable communities that are surrounded by nature. Communities filled with people who all got a fair start in life, with every one of them born and raised in loving homes where they learned from the very beginning how to work together with the people around them.
Having Kids knows how to get there. We prioritize democracy and community, and we’re creating a culture of smaller families working together to plan a better future for every child. We use something called the Fair Start modelto move the world away from isolated families toward a long-term, three-sided focus on the objective interests of parents, children, and the community. Simply put, the model shifts resources that incentivize larger families to instead incentivize smaller families that cooperate to give every child a better start in life. For example, the Fair Start modeleliminates child tax credits and other benefits for wealthy families after the first child in order to fund family planning-based early childhood development benefits for families that need them.
Want to unite people? Focus on long-term change, on children, and on having and raising kids who have more in common than we do.
