Mothers Don’t Need Medals—They Need a Better World for Their Children
Republicans’ pro-motherhood policies are a sham. Democrats have a chance to do better.
Children participate in activities at the Head Start classroom in the Carl and Norma Millers Childrens Center on March 13, 2023 in Frederick, Maryland.
(Maansi Srivastava / The Washington Post via Getty Images)Mother’s Day is here, and while President Trump may seem an unlikely celebrant of the occasion, his administration has recently floated several proposals to incentivize motherhood—or, more accurately, giving birth. There’s the $5,000 “baby bonus” for every American mother, free classes educating women on their menstrual cycles, and a National Medal of Motherhood for moms who have at least six children. (Want to guess which regime also awarded such a medal?)
As usual, Trump has offered ridiculous solutions to a very real problem. He’s certainly right that every American should be able to afford to raise children, and that programs like Social Security depend on stable demographics. But of course, every other action he has taken to undermine gender equality would suggest that this sudden interest in the well-being of mothers is less than sincere. That’s exactly why progressives have an opening to break up what the Republican Party believes to be its ideological monopoly on pro-family policies.
The roots of the fertility crisis engage the bread-and-butter issues that have long been the domain of Democrats. US birthrates have hit a record low not because the nation has become “almost pathologically anti-child,” as JD Vance asserted to The New York Times. Instead, surveys have shown that would-be parents want to own a home, repay student debt, and have money for childcare before starting a family. Yet the average age of a homebuyer has climbed to 56, almost double what it was 40 years ago. And 43 percent of young people currently carry student debt, compared to 28 percent in 1993. The problem isn’t lack of interest—it’s too much interest being paid on record high loans.
But most of the Trump administration’s floated fixes are unoriginal swipes from the undemocratic leaders they admire. In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared a “Decade of Childhood in Russia,” an innocent name for a program that calls for everything from defending so-called family values to encouraging conjugal trysts during workplace coffee breaks to censoring “childfree propaganda.” Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán has dedicated 5 percent of Hungary’s GDP to pronatalist policies, which include nationalized IVF services and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with three children. These men are carrying on an authoritarian tradition begun by the original strongman, Benito Mussolini, whose “Battle for Births” portended literal battles that decreased Europe’s population by 20 million people.
That’s why those who really care about real solutions would be wise to start offering their own plans, and, in fact, some already have. What the Trump administration didn’t plagiarize from plutocrats, they took from progressives, which is why “baby bonuses” sounds an awful lot like the “baby bonds” proposed in 2021 by Senators Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. The legislation would put $1,000 in a savings account at birth for every American child. The Biden-era American Rescue Plan also almost doubled the child tax credit, which nearly halved the child poverty rate. Though making that expansion permanent received bipartisan support, it was ultimately killed by the centrist triangulating of Joe Manchin.
Four years later, Democrats have the chance to embrace a genuinely progressive agenda that doubles as a pro-family platform. Bernie Sanders has long called for canceling all student debt; Elizabeth Warren has campaigned for universal childcare; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the first politicians on Capitol Hill to offer three months of paid parental leave to her entire staff. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has also called for a whole raft of policies that would lower the cost of living, from expanding Medicaid to investing $250 billion in affordable housing. They understand that real relief will come not from handing out medals but from having the mettle to fight for working families.
Still, even if Democrats manage a progressive populist revival not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it likely wouldn’t be enough to lift birthrates. In social democracies like Finland and Sweden—which offer 13 months of paid parental leave and cover 90 percent of preschool costs, respectively—fertility remains below replacement levels.
Does that indicate that the problem may be more fundamental? One sociologist, Dr. Karen Benjamin Guzzo, has attributed this dilemma to apprehension: “People really need to feel confident about the future.” But whether it’s 60 percent of young people feeling very worried about climate change, or 80 percent of new mothers feeling lonely, or 90 percent of voters feeling that American politics is broken, the state of the world doesn’t seem too conducive to domestic bliss. The right’s response to this anxiety is embodied by Elon Musk, who keeps siring children with women he meets on X to create a “legion-level” brood “before the apocalypse.”
To help avert said apocalypse, what should be on offer are authentically family-friendly policies that benefit parents and nonparents alike. In doing so, there’s a chance to persuade Americans that the next generation still might have a brighter future than the last. Or, at the very least, that progressives have a more compelling vision for American families than the one whose budget is about to take billions from children’s education, food, and healthcare.
It’s one thing to incentivize giving birth. Americans deserve leaders who will fight for those kids after they’re born.
