It’s simple. The most effective way to address the climate crisis, and reduce our impact on the environment and other species, is by choosing smaller families. And when parents choose smaller families, they and their communities can cooperatively invest more time, attention and resources in each child to ensure a fair start in life.

Our campaigns are aimed to achieve these goals. Having Kids is also building a community of everyday families, celebrities, and thought leaders who are leading by example and speaking out publicly about the need for child-first family planning. We call it the Sustainable Families campaign.
 

The impact of better family planning and early childhood investments:

• 20 TIMES: Having a smaller family is 20 times more effective at reducing climate impact than changing diet or forms of transportation. Learn more about climate impact and family size. 
• BILLIONS: 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. 
• 13%: New research by Nobel laureate economist James Heckman and his coauthors suggests that, after accounting more accurately for long-term health and other benefits, the return on investment for early childhood programs is even higher than previously believed, at 13 percent rather than 7-10 percent. 
• 1 MILLION SPECIES face extinction thanks to population growth-driven human activity, the U.N. reports.
• Our current family planning systems provide no minimum standard of well-being for future children, allowing children to be born into failing state systems because their parents cannot care for them. That exacerbates inequity, and ensures rich kids stay rich and poor kids stay poor.
  
• Child-first family planning provides 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.

Further Reading:

Lower Fertility Isn’t A Crisis. It’s A Solution.
Fertility Rates May Be Down (For Now), But Our Population Is Still On the Rise.

Families who care about the future are taking real action.

Read their stories – and join these and other families making a better future for all!