Against Baby Bonuses

This social conservative isn't a fan...

Source: CBS

Last month, the New York Times floated a story about the Trump administration possibly weighing a baby bonus proposal.

One of the lead champions of this policy is Heritage Foundation’s Emma Waters. She’s prominently featured in the article as a booster of the Trump’s administration reported plans to issue $5,000 baby bonuses.

The publication reported, “Baby bonuses and menstrual cycle classes are among the ideas pitched to Trump aides as they consider plans to try boosting the birthrate.”

In a now memory-holed 2022 article titled “Crushing Society’s Building Block,” Waters once argued that despite how awful Joseph Stalin was, he was pro-family and supported intact families. What!? Here’s what she wrote:

Joseph Stalin had an utter disregard for human life, and his regime claimed the lives of 9,000,000-20,000,000 of its own subjects. Yet even Stalin understood that society depended on strong, intact families.

Prior to Stalin’s rule, Vladimir Lenin had enforced radical anti-family policies. As Elizabeth Brainerd writes, “When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 they intended to break down the traditional ‘bourgeois’ structure of the family to equalize the status of men and women.” They quickly implemented an easy, inexpensive, no-fault divorce program and were the first nation to legalize abortion.

The outcome was much like you would expect: marriage rates plummeted, out-of-wedlock births sky-rocketed, and women were forced into harsh and demanding work. Much like the United States since 1965, poverty and deaths of despair exploded and society fragmented along moral, religious and civil lines. People were promised “equality and prosperity.” They got fatherless children and a steady decline in men’s work force participation.

To remedy this, Stalin overturned the nation’s no-fault divorce law. He also implemented policies designed to encourage family life. One, Brainerd notes, was an extra tax imposed upon “single people and married couples with fewer than three children.” Others included so-called ‘Motherhood medals’ for mothers with several children as well as benefits for larger families.

What’s more, abortion became illegal and, Brainerd writes, the 1944 Family Code “made the procedure for divorce so much more expensive and complicated that it has been described as effectively a ‘prohibition on divorce.’”

Let this sink in. Even the monstrous Stalin, who is responsible for millions of deaths and atrocities, saw that a society needs intact families with both mothers and fathers, if it is to flourish.

When her article was re-earthed last year, I chimed in and countered her claim that Stalin kept families intact - given how he orchestrated the separation of my Lithuanian grandparents and their families. And that of millions of others.

The NYT - fittingly, the propaganda outfit that housed Stalin apologist Walter Duranty - noted the White House is potentially weighing the establishment of a "National Medal of Motherhood” too - though I’ve yet to see any concrete detail confirming this. The publication claims:

The "National Medal of Motherhood" is a proposed award being considered by the White House, specifically to recognize mothers with six or more children. This idea is part of a broader discussion around increasing the US birthrate, including other proposals like cash "baby bonuses" and government-funded education on natural fertility.

The NYT loves to draw parallels between the the Trump administration and 20th century totalitarian regimes. (They’re wrong.) Yes, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany did award motherhood medals predicated on boosting birthrates. This is how they duped people, especially gullible Westerners, to buy their propaganda. My parents told me this was ubiquitous in the former USSR and how they were appalled by these claims, knowing how the USSR treated women and babies.

Both regimes didn’t respected women nor human life given their penchant for mass murder. Don’t buy into this propaganda about totalitarian regimes being pro-family. They weren’t.

I doubt the Trump administration makes this proposal official policy. It’s ludicrous. There’s no framework yet, so this is purely speculative and could very well be off-mark.

Much to the chagrin of NatCons, baby bonuses haven’t worked in Hungary. At all. And it looks like President Trump is apparently (finally!) souring on Viktor Orban for strengthening economic ties with Chinese leader Xi Zinping.

I do, however, concur with mother of two,

Dana Loesch

: Baby bonuses are welfare - pure and simple. As Dana noted on her Substack:

Bluntly, we already have this. It’s called welfare.

If you reduce the tax burden, government spending, and deregulate you won’t have to do this.

The bottom 50% of Americans pay an average of $822, per latest IRS data. Unless you’re only returning $5k of taxpayer dollars to people who paid in $5k or more this is a wealth redistribution scheme.

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It begs the question that expanding welfare itself is pro-family. Welfare makes the American family co-dependent on the government instead of independent of it. How is that “pro” family? What does being pro-family have to of with expanding welfare? Why isn’t it also “pro-family” to eliminate or reduce income taxes, deregulate, and cut government spending?

This defense outsources godly stewardship to the state while giving the government a pass for expanding itself and burdening other families. It is a veneer hiding the further diminishment of the family unit through dependency on the state.

Mother of six, Bethany Mandel, equally expressed concerns with baby bonuses.

“The idea calls to mind the meme of a drowning man, hand barely above water, reaching out for help — only to get a high-five before slipping under,” Mandel mused in NY Post.

She added:

American families don’t need a flashy push present. We need durable policy change.

We need tax reform rooted in research, reflecting the real needs of modern mothers and fathers, and support that empowers families to dream bigger, not just survive.

Bethany points to not only a baby shortage, but a significant drop in marriages.

The problem isn’t just a drop in babies, it’s a drop in marriages.

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So maybe instead of a $5,000 baby bonus, Trump should consider a one-time tax break for newlyweds.

Marriage is still the most reliable path to a thriving family, and federal policies should reflect that.

Of course, money alone can’t solve this crisis. We also need a culture shift, a reawakening to the beauty and adventure of family life.

There’s certainly a fertility crisis in the U.S. And the blame shouldn’t be entirely shouldered on women. Plenty of us aren’t opting-into childlessness. Many of us desire to get married and have kids - but with the right person.

The hook-up culture did no favors to Millennials men and women - ruining courting and dating. COVID-19 didn’t help, either. Now, the red pill movement - especially toxic figures like Andrew Tate - have brainwashed some young guys to view marriage-minded single women in their 30s as “ran-through” and “expired,” despite evidence to the contrary.

It takes two to tango to promote a culture of family centered around children. Leaning on the government, however, will invite more problems.

My two cents.

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