White House proposes giving out $5,000 checks to address falling birthrates amid growing ‘pronatalist’ movement
One of Donald Trump’s priorities for his second term is getting Americans to have more babies – and the White House has a new proposal to encourage them to do so: a $5,000 “baby bonus”.
The plan to give cash payments to mothers after delivery shows the growing influence of the “pronatalist” movement in the US, which, citing falling US birthrates, calls for “traditional” family values and for women – particularly white women – to have more children.
But experts say $5,000 checks won’t lead to a baby boom. Between unaffordable health care, soaring housing costs, inaccessible childcare and a lack of federal parental leave mandates, Americans face a swath of expensive hurdles that disincentivize them from having large families – or families at all – and that will require a much larger government investment to overcome.
Then quit being fucking paranoid cowards and fix that!
My last kid was very much free-range, maybe even feral, like his older sibs, and stopped being a kid in 2017. It helps to be living close to nature. Not even necessarily wild places, just forests, wetlands, open meadows and some good hills. All of that is within an hour’s easy bike ride of our house. But then, we don’t think that half an acre is a minimum lot size. To me, that’s too much maintenance.
And for the self-motivated, there are less regimented options.
Welp I don’t have children and it would be highly weird if I went around forcing other people’s kids to go play free-range so…