At a time when most Americans identify as pro-choice, the GOP has abandoned language supporting a constitutional amendment banning abortion and a small-but-influential voting bloc has condemned the use of assisted-reproductive technology like IVF, it’s critical that lawmakers galvanize support around popular, common sense, pro-family ideas.
A recent Gallup poll, for example, reveals a plurality of Americans want three kids or more. Those dreams of having a larger family, though, aren’t being realized in the United States, as the fertility rate continues to drop amid the high cost of housing and child care.
What’s more, the Institute for Family Studies projects the rate of childlessness for women born in the late 1970s and 1980s will “skyrocket” if the baby bust continues, even though most women either want children or haven’t ruled out the possibility of having them at some point.
It’s time for lawmakers to lean into policies that will give everyday people the confidence they need to grow their family. This, in turn, will help women start families sooner — before old age or disease further inhibits dreams of family life — and better support kids during a critical time.
Research shows the early years of a child’s life — from in-utero development through age 8, as defined by the American Academy of Pediatrics — are critical to long-term health. Policymakers should galvanize support around these early years for mother and child alike.
Promoting well-being in the early years is an important part of encouraging family formation. Take, for example, bills like the “More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed Act,” also known as the MOMS Act. Introduced by Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., the bill would create a grant program for eligible nonprofits to provide pre- and post-natal support for expectant mothers.
This post-natal support is critical for families and children, especially considering a recent New York Times piece that details the ways the pandemic and its related lockdowns adversely affected babies born and raised during the height of the turbulent COVID-19 years.
While the authors of the piece suggest more federal dollars are needed to create a larger corporate child care infrastructure, a better and more desirable idea is to create flexible early childhood accounts that give parents freedom to raise kids at home or send them somewhere more preferable than a one-size-fits-all child care franchise.
This would also help fill the gap where so many businesses are falling short and failing to provide average Americans maternity leave or work-from-home arrangements, as more and more businesses implement return-to-office mandates and shrink maternity leave.
Early childhood accounts would also meet the needs of parents with young kids who need better, more bespoke childcare options. According to one survey, a plurality of those with young kids prefer one parent to stay home full time or work part time to care for children.
Lawmakers should listen to parents and would-be parents on this issue, as doing so would open the door to creating a world where caregivers aren’t automatically shamed and forced into the workplace but instead are rewarded for their contributions.
Another way to encourage family formation and provide immediate relief for kids is restoring the refundable adoption tax credit, which would help transition the nearly 400,000 children in foster care — half of whom are under 10 — out of temporary housing and into a permanent home.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, about 80% of children in foster care have mental-health struggles, but that statistic is pulled from research performed in the early aughts. Imagine how many more foster care kids post-pandemic suffer from mental-health issues.
The bottom line? It’s time for game, set, match on family policy and finding common ground on an otherwise divisive issue. Americans of all persuasions can rally around supporting women and children in the early years.
Carolyn Bolton is an advocacy manager at the National Council For Adoption and a former newspaper reporter. These views are her own.