Policies to Push Women Out of the Workforce or Give Them Choice?

Recent reports show the Trump administration is considering giving parents $5,000 to encourage citizens to have more children. They are calling it a "baby bonus." See ABC News article. Various members of the administration seem to be particularly focused on procreation. Just google Elon Musk and JD Vance and their comments on increasing the population. Trump wants to be called the "fertilization president" now. See MSN article. The reasoning behind all this baby talk is because fewer babies being born in the US means fewer workers are in the pipeline to support our increasing number of retirees - which is a real economic concern. However, despite all the discussion in this regard, the reasoning for wanting more babies might not be as simple or well-meaning as the administration claims. The MSN opinion article claims, "[Trump] and his regime are not interested in more babies or children in America. Their real aim is to discourage abortion and encourage more traditional male-dominate nuclear households. In other words: patriarchy."

If you think this claim is pure hyperbole, instead of offering women support with child care and parental leave so they can continue in their jobs, wheels are already in motion to raise the cost of child care. The administration plans to decrease or outright eliminate federal child care funding and programs. There have already been cuts to Head Start and funding for day care for low-income families - a result of Musk's DOGE firings. The administration claims it is a benevolent plan to allow more parents to "scale back at work" and be at home to raise children. It seems like a good idea to give parents an option to be a stay-at-home parent, if they want. However, these changes make it almost certain that women will be pushed out of the workforce because working is no longer sustainable because of the cost of child care. Anyone who lived through covid will recall that the lack of child care during the pandemic meant a disproportionate number of women had to quit their jobs and lose their income to stay home and care for their families. Furthermore, because men typically earn more than women, it was disproportionately the women who had to leave the workforce.

The increase in child care costs will undoubtedly mean more women will have to leave their jobs to stay home. All these efforts are "part of a broader social agenda ... to promote a very specific idea of what constitutes a family - with a married mother and father who have as many children as possible, a concept that leaves out many families that do not conform to traditional structures or gender roles." If the administration really wants to help women choose to have more children or have the opportunity to stay home to raise them if they want, then why is there little to no republican support for paid family and medical leave? Why isn't any proposed child tax credit anywhere close to covering what child care actually costs? If the administration truly wants more children born in the US, they should focus on decreasing the cost of child care. The path they are pursuing makes child care so ridiculously expensive that parents of all socioeconomic classes won't have the choice to have a double income family - one parent will have to leave the workforce to provide the care they would have otherwise paid for.

See more details about both positions at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/us/politics/republicans-parents-babies-home.html