As a millennial mother and policy researcher, I’ve been waiting a long time for Republicans to take up the mantle of dependable pro-family policies. The traditionally conservative, free-market philosophy of a rising tide lifting all boats by reducing regulation and taxes didn’t always work in the latter part of the last century: Families were breaking apart in historic proportions, wages for low-income workers stalled, nearly half of mothers lacked any type of job protection (let alone pay) after birth, and public schools showed cracks. Reagan-era conservatives such as myself knew we didn’t like what the Democrats offered: massive new entitlements and spending. But our laissez-faire alternative wasn’t working either.
To be sure, Republicans are talking more about family policy these days than I can remember in my lifetime, but what we’re seeing and hearing from the new right in Washington is not what I had in mind. Instead of fiscal responsibility and a focus on family values, we’re seeing fiscal profligacy, policy decisions that could destabilize families, and political figures displaying a disregard for norms and decency in their personal lives. MAGA leaders have lost the vision on what “good” even looks like for families, and operate their lives out of a different value set.
This spring’s tax debate promises billions of unfunded cash benefits to families way up the income ladder by expanding the child tax credit, but that excludes the most vulnerable, who don’t make enough to receive full benefits. Trump’s trade war will push up the cost of living for families and increase the chances of a recession. In Texas we are in an avoidable measles outbreak that has already killed two children. The Department of Education is being gutted while student achievement scores are near decade lows. And that’s not even to mention the MAGA effects on non-citizen families: More than 1,000 children remain separated from their parents as a result of Trump’s first-term immigration policies. This time around, kids are being kept home from school and church and fear their parents being deported.
There have been wins, of course. Abortion has been rolled back in red states—a win for pro-life, pro-family conservatives—since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. But not enough has been done to ensure that the most vulnerable women and children receive better care in its wake.
Meanwhile, prominent MAGA leaders are acting out anything but traditional family values in their personal lives: During the interregnum between his two presidential terms, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, and he was convicted on charges stemming from hush money payments to a porn actress. His defense secretary has been accused of sexual assault. His nominee for attorney general withdrew from consideration amid accusations of sex with minors. Others seem to operate on a whole different value system. As the Wall Street Journal just laid out in painstaking detail, Elon Musk—Trump’s top donor and head of the Department of Government Efficiency—has fathered at least 14 children with four women.
“MAGA leaders have lost the vision on what ‘good’ even looks like for families, and operate their lives out of a different value set.”
We’re not electing pastors to political leadership, I get that. But in some ways, the machismo, sexualized bro culture of the new right feels as obsessed with gender and identity as the left they are fighting against—leaving those of us in the trenches of parenthood and actually raising children without an advocate.
Most American parents (78 percent) believe that their children are going to inherit a worse future—the highest share in 30 years. Amid that uncertainty, they deserve a thoughtful plan. To the extent that there’s a serious family policy discussion happening on the right, it largely seems to be centered around boosting fertility rates, or what’s called “pro-natalism.” America’s fertility rate has dropped below replacement (as is the case with much of the rest of the developed world), which has horrible ramifications on everything from available workers to the budget to economic growth.
But as a policy goal, fertility is difficult to address and raises ethical questions. Various countries are experimenting with extremely large cash handouts to encourage marriage and childbirth, such as $10,000 payments per child in Russia or $14,000 wedding bonuses in South Korea. Most European countries offer expansive safety nets for new parents and parents in general, including child care support, cash support, and an average of a year of paid maternity leave. While these policies can have significant benefits for kids and parents, they tend to have a low ROI from the perspective of boosting fertility—either because in the case of the first the cost is so high, or in the latter that the benefit (related to fertility, though there are other benefits), is low.
Also, there’s something about the push toward more babies that makes the policy aspiration seem less like genuine support for families and more like a crude national asset play, like buying up Greenland. For those of us conservatives who are still of the limited government variety, it feels invasive: A government emboldened enough to “encourage” women to have more children is big enough to go in the opposite direction when power or demographics shift.
Which gets us to the crux of it: What is the point of family policy anyway? There was a time when family values—the sanctity of life, protection of the vulnerable, and the importance of marriage—wasn’t just a policy commitment for conservatives but a moral one, one with strong Judeo-Christian roots in particular. Historians from Rodney Stark to Tom Holland have argued that protections for babies, care of the poor and sick, sexual restraint of men, rights of women, and valuing lifelong marriage was uniquely Christian.
My sense is that our ethical anchors have become loosed, the values disordered and scattered, and policy confusion has followed. As the theologian G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.” While these values feel more deeply cultural and spiritual than anything, from a brass tacks policy perspective there are better ways than pro-natalist policies for the Republicans in charge to support our most vulnerable children and family flourishing.
As I’ve written about on numerous occasions, including in these pages, there are few policies that are more pro-family, pro-life, and pro-work than paid parental leave. All American parents—even working ones—should have the freedom and security to care for and bond with their newborns. For perspective, a public paid parental leave program would cost roughly $10 billion a year, which is one-half of 1 percent of what income security to Americans 65 and older costs (totaling $1.4 trillion in 2024) and a small fraction of the cost of extending the child tax credit.
In the face of student achievement gaps, gutting—or worse, closing—the Department of Education is about politics, not helping kids. We need national data to hold states accountable from juicing test scores, and conservatives know that men are not angels. We should expand school choice for K-12, but also support vouchers for early childhood education so that families can afford for their children to be in stimulating early learning environments at churches or schools or in homes, whether part-time or full-time. Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman’s research shows the overwhelming and intergenerational benefits of this type of investment for our most vulnerable kids in particular.
There are ways to reduce marriage penalties in our tax and benefit code, which encourage single parenthood for low-income mothers and all that that brings. Cash benefits, in the form of the child tax credit or otherwise, should be targeted for the least well off because they need it most—and our fiscal crisis demands we be judicious about spending so that such spending can be sustained.
There are still plenty of reasons for American parents to hope. There are promising glimmers of hope for effective pro-family policy across Republican and Democratic leadership, across states and the federal government. Among many, I’d highlight increased bipartisan energy for a baby bonus, which prudently targets more funding earlier in a child’s life; bipartisan working groups on the House and the Senate working on paid parental leave; red states leading the charge on supporting midwifery and doulas and rural health care; and bipartisan energy for protecting kids from big tech.
But for me at least, as a mother in the heartland, there’s a shadow over family policy from the new right. The rhetoric, the lived experiences, even the policy plans can feel like they are motivated by power and control, not by supporting our most vulnerable infants and parents. And so I find myself still waiting for a conservative pro-family party.
