{"id":221,"date":"2026-06-28T09:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T09:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=221"},"modified":"2026-06-28T09:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T09:09:09","slug":"women-arent-under-babied-theyre-under-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"Women Aren’t \u201cUnder-babied.\u201d They’re Under Threat."},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s the worst beach read ever.<\/p>\n

The ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation\u2014the architect of Project 2025\u2014is back with a \u201cpro-natalist\u201d sequel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more The President\u2019s Birthright Citizenship Order is Not Just Unconstitutional. It\u2019s Crazy<\/a><\/p>\n

Its 168-page report, titled \u201cSaving America by Saving the Family,\u201d blames social welfare programs and \u201csecond wave feminism\u201d for America\u2019s falling fertility rates. Its solution: Promoting marriage and motherhood, even at the expense of women\u2019s freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report is both exhausting and terrifying. Worse still, it could also become reality, with dire consequences for women\u2019s opportunities and wellbeing.<\/p>\n

As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts recently pointed out\u2014in a flex that demonstrates the organization\u2019s influence\u2014more than half of Project 2025\u2019s recommendations have been implemented by Donald Trump\u2019s administration. Trump\u2019s cabinet is full of Heritage-aligned pro-natalists, including Vice President JD Vance (whose wife, Usha, is expecting their fourth child), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz (\u201cDr. Oz\u201d), who recently diagnosed American women as \u201cunder-babied.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a rhetorical exercise, \u201cSaving America\u201d is a flop. While Project 2025\u2019s muscular language readily translated into sound bites and stump speeches (and often was), \u201cSaving America\u201d\u2019s moralistic tone, awkward prudishness, and overwrought prose are cringe-inducing. Take, for instance, the report\u2019s shrill warning against Chinese \u201csexbots\u201d as a threat to American marriage:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Chinese companies are investing billions of dollars on lifelike \u201ccompanion robots\u201d\u2014better known as sexbots. These advanced robots integrate chatbots and other forms of AI with materials like silicone and thermoplastic elastomer\ufeff to mimic human skin, and even realistic temperature and skeletons. \u2026<\/p>\n

Society can no longer treat this looming technology as a niche or distant threat. No technology can change human nature; but many technologies can easily debase humans, destroy their relationships, and degrade their legal protections. Machines designed<\/em> to replace human companionship and intimate sex acts will surely multiply the many pathologies already unleashed by endemic visual porn.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh-KAY.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But other passages, despite their clumsy language, convey dangerous misogyny: that women\u2019s freedom jeopardizes the social order, and that women\u2019s \u201cliberation\u201d is to blame for the breakdown of marriage and family. Here, for instance, is the report\u2019s core thesis about what\u2019s gone wrong in America:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution promoted an individualistic, child-free, marriage-free, sexual \u201cliberation\u201d that promised to lead to an unparalleled era of consent-based human happiness and fulfillment. Over the course of 60 years, casual sex, abortion, childlessness by choice, and no-fault divorce became normalized, while marriage and the natural family became stigmatized.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This diagnosis, in turn, leads to a cul-de-sac of policy ideas centered on \u201cmarriage promotion\u201d\u2014an idea that crashed and burned during President Bill Clinton\u2019s welfare reform efforts in the 1990s but remains an organizing theme for conservatives (including in Project 2025).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSaving America\u201d proposes a slew of goodies for married, heterosexual couples (what it calls a \u201cnatural family\u201d). These ideas include a $2,500 deposit into Trump Accounts for \u201cmen and women who marry by or before the current average age of first marriage (about age 30)\u201d and a \u201cHome Childcare Equalization Tax Credit\u201d of $2,000 to benefit stay-at-home moms. (The report offers nothing to subsidize the cost of child care, which it derides as \u201cnon-parental care\u201d linked to \u201cbehavioral problems\u201d and other issues.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, the report advocates punitive measures for unmarried mothers, especially those on public assistance. It proposes stiffening work requirements for eligibility to federal programs such as SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid\u2014something the Trump administration has already pursued\u2014and ending what it calls the \u201cstacking\u201d of benefits\u2014the ability of households to receive both food assistance and housing help, for instance. It fails to acknowledge, however, the likelihood of hunger and homelessness for millions of families and children if those benefits are denied.<\/p>\n

In an especially prescriptive piece of social engineering, the report imagines faith-based \u201cmarriage \u2018bootcamp[s]\u2019 for cohabiting couples with children\u201d that would pay couples a \u201c\u2018wedding bonus\u2019 of up to $5,000 on their wedding day.\u201d (The report cautions, however, that such payments should be made \u201cthrough foundations or private donors, not government funds\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report also extols Hungary as a beacon of pro-natalist policies and promotes the MAHA-adjacent practice of \u201cRestorative Reproductive Medicine,\u201d an allegedly \u201cnatural\u201d alternative to fertility treatment that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has criticized as \u201cnonmedical\u201d and potentially harmful. Perhaps its most unworkable idea\u2014among the many contenders for that title\u2014is for the Department of Transportation to \u201cprioritize communities with \u2018marriage and birth rates higher than the national average\u2019 when distributing federal transportation grants, loans, and contracts.\u201d It\u2019s hard to imagine a connection between highway funding and fertility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Mamdani\u2019s Movement Interests May Collide with His Mayoral Interests<\/a><\/p>\n

These cartoonishly extremist ideas distract from a very real concern: Kids are expensive. And affordability is the real root cause of America\u2019s fertility problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans aren\u2019t \u2018underbabied,\u2019\u201d says Varina Winder, cofounder of the nonprofit Arch Collaborative. \u201cThey\u2019re underinsured, underemployed, and underpaid.\u201d According to Brigham Young University\u2019s 2025 American Family Survey, more than 7 in 10 Americans say having children is \u201cunaffordable.\u201d Varina cites housing costs in particular as a burden on families, as well as general economic uncertainty. \u201cIt\u2019s AI, it\u2019s the climate, it\u2019s political instability, it\u2019s violence,\u201d she said. \u201cFolks are really fearing, and probably for the right reasons, that the future is not going to be better for their kids.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s Monthly<\/em> podcast, out on Wednesday, Varina walks through more of the shortcomings of the Heritage Foundation\u2019s plan and its failure to address women\u2019s needs. I hope you\u2019ll take a look.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss at the <\/strong>Monthly<\/em><\/strong>\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A fresh betrayal of rural America<\/strong>. <\/strong>Under the Biden administration, Congress created a landmark $42 billion grant program to close the \u201cdigital divide\u201d in rural America. But the biggest beneficiary of this program could be Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink. Editor Kainoa Lowman reports that new rules announced by the Trump administration heavily favor Starlink\u2019s satellites over higher-quality providers of fiber-optic networks. The result, Kainoa writes, will be \u201cslower, \u200b\u200b\u200bless reliable\u200b, and likely costlier broadband\u201d for rural Americans. Get the details here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The culture war\u2019s founding father<\/strong>. <\/strong>\u201cLong before Donald Trump crawled out of his palatial sewer and Fox News beamed into the brains of middle America,\u201d writes David Masciotra, one North Carolina senator recognized the political power of hatred: the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. David reviewed Isaac Butler\u2019s new book, The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America\u2019s Culture Wars<\/em>, which credits Helms as \u201can ideological and tactical founder of the contemporary Republican Party.\u201d Helms, like Trump, was able to cow his opponents into submission. These early capitulations, David argues, set the stage for the culture wars battles of today. Read here.<\/p>\n

Rescuing Americans from dead-end jobs<\/strong>. <\/strong>Millions of Americans are stranded in dead-end jobs that don\u2019t lead to higher pay or career advancement. What\u2019s worse, they have no path out. It\u2019s a national crisis that demands a national strategy, writes PPI\u2019s Bruno Manno. \u201cA job isn\u2019t enough if it leads nowhere,\u201d he argues. Bruno calls for new mechanisms and measures to help all workers leverage their skills to find a better path upward. Read here.<\/p>\n

The truth about American college students<\/strong>. <\/strong>Right-wing critics of higher education like to paint American college students as pampered, uber-lefty elitists. But a new poll by Third Way shows that U.S. college students are pretty moderate politically, uninterested in campus protests, have positive attitudes about their institution, and like many Americans today, are struggling to get by. In this exclusive look at Third Way\u2019s data, Michael Nietzel paints a portrait of the typical student at the nation\u2019s regional public universities, which educate the vast majority of American college students. These are the students most hurt by the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on higher education. Read here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus\u2026<\/p>\n