Better family planning looks like:
- Delaying parenthood – Providing access to healthcare and education to help people wait until they are ready to become parents, and then spacing pregnancies.
- Smaller families – Parents are able to invest more in each child and ensure a regenerative future.
- Community support – Communities guarantee that all kids have the resources they need for a fair start in life. Small families make this possible and sustainable.
It’s simple: Fair Start family planning means smaller families sharing resources to invest more in every child. For some, the closest analog for this new model would be responsible family planning incentives. But Fair Start resources are actually entitlements held by future children, and funded through non-traditional means. Those opposed to remodeling favor our current system of unsustainable families, unearned privileges, and undemocratic influence, over giving kids a fair start in life.
What the Fair Start Model Does
The Fair Start model addresses the biggest problems affecting kids such as poverty, inequality, and neglect. The model breaks down the barrier between family planning and child welfare, aligning need with resource. The model links 1) where and when children enter the world, with 2) the provision of what those kids need for a fair start in life. In making that link the model has the greatest impact on child welfare, equality, animals and the environment – exponentially more impact than downstream approaches. In so doing the model corrects for cognitive dissonances that prevent us from seeing that how we plan families, more than any other one thing, determines the quality of life on Earth. By focusing our attention on future children the model temporalizes our thinking, allows us to plan ahead, requires us to cooperate, and thereby helps ensure the best outcomes. What’s a good analogy? In many ways our remodeling of family planning looks like the revision of the norms, in the late 20th Century, around using seat belts. Small improvements can lead to massive benefits.
