Oh, Baby, Baby! Part II

You may have heard about the White House’s ideas for raising the birth rate, but let’s be clear: Far-right Republicans don’t really care about the birth rate per se because for one thing, Hispanics and Blacks have higher fertility rates than White people do.

The unspoken truth is that the current administration is only interested in White babies.

For another thing, the list of anti-family policies in America is long and deeply entrenched. Economist Robert Reich recently noted that the Republican Party has historically blocked:

-Paid sick leave

-Paid family and medical leave

-Universal childcare

-Universal pre-K

-Expanded Child Tax Credit

-Programs to support reproductive health

Additionally, 45/47 wants to stamp out Public Service Loan Forgiveness for student loan debt, a move which will do nothing to encourage young people to start families sooner.

Yet, White House aides have been soliciting ideas on how to boost the (White) birth rate in Dear Leader’s image. Here’s a short list:

-Offer $5,000 cash “baby bonus” for each live birth

-Reserve 30% of Fulbright scholarships to be awarded to married applicants or families with children

-Start government-funded programs to educate women about their menstrual cycles

-Award a National Medal of Motherhood to women with six or more children

Is this what the parents (and hopeful parents) of America want? Is $5,000 enough to cover out-of-pocket birth costs and the first couple of years of diapers?

What if your child needs to spend weeks at the Neonatal ICU or requires other medical care in infancy?

Writer Jess Piper in her Substack column, “The View from Rural Missouri,” points out “that the government will not pony-up the $5,000 for a pregnancy, but only for a baby, which makes [her] wonder about the ‘life begins at conception’ regulations.”

And what about the Fulbright scholarship offer, eh? How many of us will be lining up for that opportunity? That’s just it. Such a solution isn’t designed for non-white people, but it’s not aimed at the White hoi polloi either.

They don’t want the mom who works at Walmart and the dad who works at Tyson to have a passel of kids. To their way of thinking, the far-less-rich will just muddy the bloodlines that the re-president wants to breed.

Such a measure is intended to breed a super race, but there’s a small problem. The folks behind these ideas fall desperately short of being super themselves. Their ideas are punitive, insular, and contradictory to their own aims.

As to their third idea: Educating young women about their menstrual cycles is either deeply offensive, assuming women don’t already know their own bodies or it’s code for tracking menstrual cycles to keep tabs on women. I thought this was the party that wanted less government interference. All bets are off when it comes to your womb, I guess.

And finally, a medal? A medal? Really? You know who else gave women medals for being prolific procreators? It was a party in 1930s Germany that started with an “N” and ended with an “I,” and there was a “Z” in the middle.

Yes, we need more babies, so let’s support those who want them with wide-ranging policies that make raising a family possible, affordable even. Implementing real societal change rather than edicts or empty gestures would be a great starting point.

I want good childcare and paid maternity/paternity leave for my children and their spouses. I want them to have what I didn’t have. As much as I want better policies for the young mothers in my life, I want that for every parent, married or not, straight or gay, brown or black or white because it’s the right, decent, and humane thing to do.

Joan Zwagerman writes from Storm Lake.