Trump wants more American babies. He needs to think more about what moms need. | Opinion
A few years ago, not long after my mother died, I was rummaging through an old filing cabinet in my parents’ spare room, looking for a copy of my birth certificate.
For as long as I can remember, this beige metal dinosaur had sat in this location, holding within its bowels an eccentric amount of paperwork, receipts, the contents of long discarded purses and wallets, and other relics from my childhood.
I never did find the birth certificate, but I did find a fragile paper receipt for a month’s worth of my own childcare in the early ’90s. The full sum for a month’s worth of daycare services back then?
Approximately $95, or about $1,100 per year.
Some 30 years later, parents nowadays pay something closer to $6,552 to $15,600 annually for childcare — representing between 8.9% and 16% of their median income on full-day care — for just one child. That’s according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor, which flatly called modern childcare costs “an almost prohibitive expense” for modern American families.
It is certainly a prohibitive expense for me, as an increasingly not-so-young woman who would someday like to have a child, but simply cannot afford to without some sort of outside financial support or dual income. Nor can I think of anyone with children in my friend group who has more than one or two children, despite many of them wanting a larger family.
I think that’s why so many of us Millennials — the age group currently having the most children in America, according to the March of Dimes, and currently between 29 and 44 years old — were shocked by Monday’s revelation that the Trump Administration has been soliciting ideas from pronatalist advisors on how to raise the birth rate.
According to The New York Times, those ideas included: reserving prestigious scholarships (like the Fulbright program) for applicants who are married or have children; giving new mothers thousands of dollars in cash incentives as a “baby bonus;” and instituting a program to teach women about their menstrual cycles (in the outdated belief that tracking one’s cycle can help a woman conceive).
One pronatalist advisor even suggested giving a “National Medal of Motherhood” to American mothers with six or more children.
This is, of course, nonsense. None of those “benefits” would ever entice me to bring a child into 2025’s increasingly turbulent world, and I have trouble believing many other American women would feel differently, thanks to the number of attacks on women from this same administration.
American women are still contending with the loss of our right to bodily autonomy with the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
We are grappling with the rise of hostile state and federal laws governing women’s healthcare.
We are being distracted by the argument over who is or is not “a real woman.”
And we are being governed by misogynistic and patronizing leaders such as Vice President JD Vance, who recently said he wants “more babies in the United States of America,” and President Donald Trump’s unelected goon, the famously pronatalist Elon Musk, who has 14 children of his own.
I can think of three ways the current American government could make motherhood attractive to young, American women, and every one of them involves funding and supporting programs that are already in place to support new mothers.
Create mandated parental leave
Enticing young Americans into parenthood would first require instituting federally mandated, paid parental leave. It is a policy failure for the likes of which the U.S. is alone among industrialized nations, and an embarrassment we share with only six other countries, including Papua New Guinea and some small, Pacific island nations.
According to the National Partnership for Women & Families, paid parental leave improves maternal and infant health, including their physical health and well-being; women who receive paid leave have a lower chance of reporting intimate partner violence; and an increase in paid parental leave decreases rates of infant mortality. It has become increasingly important during the dual crises of the COVID pandemic and the nation’s economic downturn.
“Our maternity care system often fails to provide equitable, respectful, culturally centered, safe, effective and affordable care,” states the partnership on its website. “It spectacularly fails communities struggling with the burden of structural racism and other forms of inequity, including Black, Indigenous and other people of color; rural communities; and people with low incomes.”
Make childcare affordable
Second, America needs to give parents — and especially mothers — the chance to continue their careers by making child care more affordable.
Women still only make an average of 83 cents to every dollar a man in the same job makes.
“Childcare providers still operate financially on the margins, and workers receive relatively low wages,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s website. In fact, prior to the start of the pandemic in early 2020, the childcare sector was already facing severe challenges “related to financial viability, sustainability and access and affordability for families.” COVID only intensified these challenges for parents and providers alike.
Save the lives of mothers and children
And last but not least, America needs to make pregnancy and birth safer.
On Wednesday, the Gender Equity Policy Institute released the results of its most recent study, “Maternal Mortality in the United States After Abortion Bans.” It examines trends in maternal mortality in states that have banned abortion since 2022, compared to those that support access.
The findings reveal that mothers in abortion-ban states face twice the risk of dying compared to those in supportive states. Black women continue to face the worst outcomes: Black mothers are 3.3 times as likely to die during pregnancy as white mothers.
Texas was the only state to outlaw abortion and enforce a ban before the 2022 Dobbs decision, and in 2023, Texas’ maternal mortality rate was substantially higher than the overall rate in the United States. Black Texan women were 2.5 times as likely to die of pregnancy or childbirth complications than white Texan women.
“Abortion bans are putting the lives of women — particularly Black and Latina mothers — at serious risk,” said Dr. Nancy L. Cohen, president of the Gender Equity Policy Institute. “This data is a wake-up call: maternal mortality is preventable, yet we are failing to protect those most vulnerable. If we don’t change course, I fear more and more women could die.”
Don’t be fooled
When Trump’s advisors say they want women to have more children, history tells us that what they mean is they want more white women to have children. The history of pronatalism is a deeply racist one that veers quickly into questions of eugenics.
What will these pronatalist politicians and their moralizing policies do with unwed mothers and their children? What about women who are unable to bear children, or simply don’t want children?
What is a childless woman’s worth in a society that prizes motherhood above any other success?
But if the Trump Administration truly wanted to make motherhood a compelling prospect, it would be far harder than doling out a national award for prolific mothers or giving women a class on menstrual cycles.
Despite all their blustering efforts and policies reminiscent only of dystopian novels, America’s birth rate will stay stagnant as long as American parenthood remains a prohibitive cost.
This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Trump wants more American babies. He needs to think more about what moms need. | Opinion."
