"Heidegger wants us to recapture the sense of people as unique and valuable, and this seems like the central argument of Dillard's book." How did we ever come to believe in the myth of intentional, just and legitimate systems of social organization - like states, corporations, and families - without actually accounting for the fair creation, development and consensual inclusion of future generations - the majority of persons - into those systems? How is consent, or self-determination, possible without that account? What norm could possibly precede that account? These articles - several peer-reviewed and originally published by Yale, Duke, Northwestern and other universities - will argue that, abstraction aside, there is no real justice without ensuring all children a fair start in life, both socially and ecologically. We first move towards justice by reforming the moral and legal right to have children, and the family planning systems the right creates, around zero baseline - or Fair Start - modeling that through collective child-centric planning enables consent to power and thus relative self-determination against the true baseline of nonpolity. Without it, we never orient our actions from a just, or inclusive and reflective, position. Fair Start moves the discussion away from population and toward people, away from counting people and toward making people count. If we care about freedom, we first care about people because in democratic systems they - ultimately - have political authority over us. A just creation norm makes God fair, our systems consensual, and frees us from one another. This book thus seeks to correct what we might call the constitutive or grundnorm fallacy: The mistake of trying to derive inclusive systems of justice, and freedom, downstream of our creation rather than going to the source - just family planning. Correcting that mistake, and understanding the right to have children, resolves a corruption at the heart of human rights which makes a system designed to protect the most vulnerable, like future persons, fundamentally exploitative of them. The creation norm is what most accounts, and should most account, for the lives we experience. Making that norm fair brings us to optimal world populations. It is also the most effective solution to the ecosocial crises we face today, with the weight of evidence showing ten to twenty times the impact, via redistributive Fair Start family planning entitlememts/incentives, on things like the climate crisis and economic inequality relative to downstream measures. "Justice is not abstract, but created in the constant and fundamental formation - or procreation - of power relations."

"This book is a guide for every young person who believes in a better world for all"—Malala Yousafzai Adults are aware of their universal human rights of freedom and equality, but children often are ignorant of the rights they possess before reaching the age of majority. Enter Know Your Rights and Claim Them, written in partnership with Amnesty International, Angelina Jolie, and Geraldine Van Bueren. Know Your Rights and Claim Them details the rights promised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, starting with the history of child rights, and providing a clear description of the types of child rights, the young activists from around the world who fought to defend them, and how readers can stand up for their own rights. "This is the perfect book for young people who care about the world and want to make a difference"—Greta Thunberg

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

In 2014 the world’s most widely ratified human rights treaty, one specifically for children, reached the milestone of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in the time since then it has entered a new century, reshaping laws, policies, institutions and practices across the globe, along with fundamental conceptions of who children are, their rights and entitlements, and society’s duties and obligations to them. Yet despite its rapid entry into force worldwide, there are concerns that the Convention remains a high-level paper treaty without the traction on the ground needed to address ever-continuing violations of children’s rights. This book, based on papers from the conference ‘25 Years CRC’ held by the Department of Child Law at Leiden University, draws together a rich collection of research and insight by academics, practitioners, NGOs and other specialists to reflect on the lessons of the past 25 years, take stock of how international rights find their way into children’s lives at the local level, and explore the frontiers of children’s rights for the 25 years ahead.

One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903–1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives. A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the Black freedom struggle. Making her way in predominantly male circles while maintaining relationships with a vibrant group of women, students, and activists, Baker was a national officer and key figure in the NAACP, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a prime mover in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In this definitive biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich career, revealing her complexity, radical democratic worldview, and enduring influence on group-centered, grassroots activism. Beyond documenting an extraordinary life, Ransby paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide throughout the twentieth century.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE • ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS • WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Financial Times • New York • Independent (U.K.) • Times (U.K.) • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.