ParentsTogether Action

ParentsTogether Action is creating people-powered change, and they need your help. Please read below to learn more about the issues they're working on and how you can get involved. Thank you!

Campaigns

  • Stop Child Marriage!
    A new report found that hundreds of thousands of children were married in the US over the past 20 years. These children are usually girls and usually marry adult men. Some are even forced to marry their own rapists. Children married to adults face high rates of abuse, as well as losing opportunities for education and careers. They are not protected by laws against statutory rape, and often cannot turn to local Child Protective Services Agencies or agencies meant to protect adult victims of abuse. Five states have banned this, but it’s perfectly legal in most. We need to stop letting these children slip through the cracks - Congress should make these marriages illegal.
    221 of 300 Signatures
    Created by Raz Pollex
  • Youtube: Stop addicting our kids!
    Autoplay and algorithm-driven recommendations on kids’ content are each dangerous on their own, and in combination they are even worse. Kids are being endangered by YouTube’s addictive content rabbit holes and recommendations that can quickly funnel children into inappropriate content. Autoplay should not be the norm for kids’ content, let alone the default setting for any account, as it currently is. In fact, YouTube even defaults to autoplay for content aimed at toddlers and preschoolers and can't be turned off on YoutTube Kids. Too much screen time has been linked to behavioral problems, sleep disorders, decreased mental health, and poorer educational outcomes in kids. Parental controls on YouTube are not sufficient, and they are difficult to figure out. Despite being concerned about screen time, most parents—60% according to a recent Pew study—don’t use parental controls to change default settings. YouTube has a responsibility to keep people safe—especially young people. Please set autoplay to be off by default for all kids content on YouTube and YouTube Kids and end algorithm-based recommendations for kids’ content entirely.
    62 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • AT&T: Help Families Afford Remote Learning
    Distance learning is hard enough, but for 9 million kids without reliable internet access, remote school is nearly impossible. AT&T, one of the largest internet providers in the U.S, had been offering low-cost, high-speed internet to families at $10/month - but the waiver expires September 30, just as the school year is ramping up.
    28,907 of 30,000 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • Congress: Stop companies selling killer baby products
    The last thing new parents want to worry about is whether their baby gear can actually HURT their baby. If it’s on the shelves at baby stores, families should be able to trust that it’s safe. But right now, they can’t -- a report just released by Congress shows kids’ company Fisher Price ignored years of safety warnings and kept selling a popular baby sleeper even after 50 infants died in them! Millions of sleepers were sold to unsuspecting parents before it was finally recalled in 2019, while Fisher Price made $200 million in profits. It is unacceptable that a major company like Fisher Price cut corners by ignoring consumer and regulator warnings. According to NPR, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is supposed to oversee such products, allows companies to sell goods with little to no safety standards. The government regulators that were supposed to protect us didn’t. And that has to change. Sign this petition asking Congress to give government watchdogs the power to protect kids!
    240 of 300 Signatures
    Created by Sarah Manasrah
  • Racists are recruiting kids on YouTube!
    Hate groups are targeting children to join them, and it is working. White supremacist movements are massively exploding in the US, facilitated by tech platforms like YouTube where vulnerable young people are recruited and radicalized. More than half of kids 8 and up have reported watching YouTube every day, and YouTube is cited by researchers as the primary source for radicalization of young people online. Here’s what happens: A kid searches for something that interests them on YouTube, like their favorite video game. After they watch that video, YouTube recommends another based on their algorithm, which often plays automatically. This way, kids and teens can get sucked into watching hours of increasingly extreme content -- something white supremacist recruiters actively exploit. The solution is clear: YouTube must fix algorithm-driven recommendations to stop promoting hate and default auto-play. Please, join us in asking YouTube to stop recommending white supremacy to children.
    777 of 800 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • Stop Racist Proctoring in Schools!
    My daughter Amaya could not easily sit down to take a biology quiz like her White classmates because proctoring software would not “recognize” her as a person. She took the test at noon with sunlight streaming through her window, and turned on all the lights in her room. It still didn’t work. She tried 10 times. She literally had to shine an LED flashlight in her face before the software would allow her to take the quiz. This type of bias piles additional stress and anxiety onto kids of color who are already dealing with the challenges of remote learning, and it tells them they don’t belong. During remote learning, thousands of schools have paid billions for proctoring software that will watch kids via their computers to ensure that they aren’t cheating. However, this type of facial recognition software is notorious for not working well on people with dark skin because the companies that develop the product mostly test it on white people. The consequences for children of color can be devastating -- higher stress, unfounded accusations of cheating, and a clear message from their school that they aren’t welcome. And it's not just students of color. Students with facial tics or differences, neurodivergent students, and students with anxiety have all been discriminated against by online proctoring software. As a special educator who has worked in elementary education for years, I know the harm this will do to kids. Please join me in urging Secretary Cardona to support equity in education and reject the use of invasive, racially biased online proctoring software in K-12 schools.
    31 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • Amazon: Let kids access books!
    Amazon controls the majority of America’s book distribution but fails to do what every other major publisher does: sell e-books and audiobooks to public libraries where kids can access them for free on apps. Amazon doesn’t just sell books, it publishes them -- including thousands of books for kids and teens and many award-winning titles. However, Amazon has refused to sell any of their e-books or audiobooks to public libraries. Shame on Amazon for undermining libraries in order to sell more books. Amazon has raked in hundreds of billions during the pandemic, with CEO Jeff Bezos 80% richer than he was a year ago! To put it mildly, the pandemic has been a windfall for this company and its CEO. Children, on the other hand, have had school and their entire lives shut down. They need access to books more than ever. Tell Amazon to stop stonewalling America’s libraries and give kids access to books
    17 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • Stop arresting and prosecuting Black Kindergarteners!
    Recently: - A Delaware State trooper arrested a third-grader over the theft of $1 - A 5-year-old with ADHD was charged with “battery on a police officer” in California - A Florida officer arrested a 6-year-old girl and zip-tied her hands The National Juvenile Justice Network recommends 14 as the minimum age for prosecution. But in most states -- 30 total -- there is no minimum age for at all prosecution. That means little kids who can’t read, write, or understand the concept of a crime can be prosecuted. And these ridiculous prosecutions disproportionately impact Black kids. In North Carolina, for example, nearly half of complaints are against Black children despite them being 22% of the population. This creates a school-to-prison pipeline that starts before kids even know what a “prison” is. We must end the school-to-prison pipeline and stop arresting and prosecuting little kids!
    46 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • Tell Congress: Make Monthly Payments to Parents Permanent!
    Congress just expanded the child tax credit this year, giving parents up to $300 a month per kid! These ‘Kid Cash’ payments will be a gamechanger for millions of struggling families, but we all know the bills won’t stop in December. That’s why the expanded child tax credit needs to be **permanent** -- that would mean $250-$300 every single month for most families with kids under 18! This would cut child poverty in HALF and invest in the wellbeing of our country’s children. We need to show politicians there’s massive support for this proposal. Sign the petition now calling on Congress to make Kid Cash permanent.
    118 of 200 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
  • TikTok: No unrealistic “beauty” filters for kids
    "Thank God these weren't around when I was 13 but also... how are teens supposed to learn to accept themselves with this sh*t?". - Demi Lovato, apologizing to her TikTok fans for using unrealistic beauty filters. Demi is right. TikTok -- immensely popular with teen girls -- has multiple types of beauty filters that let young people change their skin tone, jaw structure, facial features, body shape and more. The result is images that are more computer-generated than real -- doe-eyes, poreless skin, chiseled jawlines, and emaciated stomachs. These filters create an impossible standard for young girls forming opinions of themselves and send girls an unmistakable message that they are “not enough.” TikTok should immediately disable all beauty filters for teen accounts to support healthy and realistic standards for teen girls. It’s clear these filters fuel depression, disordered eating….TikTok knows exactly what it is doing.
    231 of 300 Signatures
    Created by Justin Ruben
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