this post was submitted on 06 May 2025

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463

Trump is trying to pay his way into a US baby boom. Experts say it won’t work (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

188 comments fedilink hide all child comments

White House proposes giving out $5,000 checks to address falling birthrates amid growing ‘pronatalist’ movement

One of Donald Trump’s priorities for his second term is getting Americans to have more babies – and the White House has a new proposal to encourage them to do so: a $5,000 “baby bonus”.

The plan to give cash payments to mothers after delivery shows the growing influence of the “pronatalist” movement in the US, which, citing falling US birthrates, calls for “traditional” family values and for women – particularly white women – to have more children.

But experts say $5,000 checks won’t lead to a baby boom. Between unaffordable health care, soaring housing costs, inaccessible childcare and a lack of federal parental leave mandates, Americans face a swath of expensive hurdles that disincentivize them from having large families – or families at all – and that will require a much larger government investment to overcome.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 hours ago

He "could" TOTALLY pay his way into a baby boom.

Step 1: Tax the rich. Lower the pressure on the lower and middle classes.

Step 2: Fix housing pricing so that a single hard-working person can afford a house, a car, and two kids without their partner having to work.

Step 3: Put some guardrails in place to stop the 2-3 companies that are buying up everything. Give medium and small business a chance to thrive without needing to be purchased by a giant company.

Step 4. Fix healthcare so that the family above gets 100% coverage for whatever happens. Pay for it with Step 1.

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 hours ago

The fact that formula is now pretty universally behind the counter or behind a locked cabinet door says a lot about the current situation in America.

[–] Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee 7 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Wow, look at that! The price of strollers just went up 5k!

Replace strollers with basically anything related to birth or infants. 5k more to spend? 5k more to earn by big business selling wares.

This assumes the hospital doesn't determine that you seem to owe 5k more for that one out of network service provider they slipped in while you were distracted during birthing.

[–] Tire@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I hate our healthcare system so much. Individual bills for random doctors you never asked for that are somehow working for the hospital but are unrelated in terms of their insurance policy makes zero sense. How could anyone consent to anything in a reasonable fashion

[–] Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee 1 points 32 minutes ago

Preach. I can do nothing but agree, and I have insider info in the insurance industry, pharma and healthcare. It's all a game to make the rich even richer and the politicians are colluding in such a bipartisan fashion you'd think the parties were fully unified.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If $5000 is a lot to you, he's really not interested in there being more of "your type" of person.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Actually, I'm sure he's quite interested in there being a nice big class of desperate labor pool ripe for exploitation.

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 3 points 3 hours ago

To quote George Carlin, 'living babies make dead soldiers'.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 points 3 hours ago

Well, they say societies grow great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.

Trump doesn't seem like a man who thinks that far ahead. He's more the Fox News "great replacement" type.

[–] adm@lemm.ee 25 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Just birthing the damn thing is like $50,000. He can shove the $5,000 right up his ass and I hope he gets paper cuts up there too.

[–] seat6@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago

I believe $5k is around the average cost (after insurance) to have a baby in the US if you have insurance.

[–] loomi@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

It’ll join the light bulbs up there from the 1st term

[–] opus86@lemmy.today 26 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

This is how you get Idiocracy. The people that would take advantage of this would be the people you don't want to over-breed.

[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 hours ago

And the same people who are likely to vote for whoever his fascist successor ends up being.

[–] ours@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago

In any case this combined with his dismantling of public education will certainly not help.

[–] BlackSheep@lemmy.ca 11 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

The people that would take advantage of this would be the people completely lacking in critical thinking.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 4 points 13 hours ago

Thats mostly what happned in Australia back in the day when we tried it. Mu friends wife was a social worker, she said coercion to have babies was endemic and the money taken off the mother by the asshat father when said money arrived. Not really a lack of critical thinking per se, just desperate :(

What a debacle.

[–] opus86@lemmy.today 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The people that would take advantage of this wouldn't have the ability for critical thinking skills. I doubt the kids would be much better.

[–] BlackSheep@lemmy.ca 4 points 14 hours ago

Sadly, I agree

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 16 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

He’s making everything more expensive, gutting medicade to nothing (50% of babies are born on medicade), taking away food stamps, getting rid of the department of education, gutting hud, gutting head start, getting rid of free lunches in schools, sending us into a Great Depression, stripping worker protections and removing any hope for a future….but yeah 5k sure that will cover your first 15 minutes of delivery. What a joke this man is

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

And up to 80% of children are covered by Medicaid depending on the state.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

and most elderly in nursing homes. That is going to be a whole lot of care work dumped onto women with little to no pay and dire economic consequences for women and families. It would be absolutely stupid to have a baby with this level of uncertainty

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I'm just looking forward to when I have time to yeet my uterus (get a hysterectomy). It was a pain to find an OBGyn who would do it without asking too many questions, but I still brought my husband to the consultation appointment just in case there was any push back because I'm a woman in her 30's with no children. I've had previous OBGyn's refuse to even discuss a hysterectomy with me because "what if your future husband wants children" when I wasn't even in a relationship or dating at the time.

[–] IamSparticles@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

“what if your future husband wants children”

"Then he shouldn't be marrying someone without a uterus" would be the logical response. Sorry you had to go through that bullshit.

If it makes you feel any better, my wife and I were both 40 and already had two healthy kids in elementary school when I got a consultation for a vasectomy. They still made me do everything short of swear on a bible that I wasn't going to change my mind before they would agree to do it. They insisted that my wife come in with me and sign a document affirming her agreement with the procedure before they would schedule it. Then they made us both give verbal and written agreement AGAIN right before they started. It was nuts (pardon the pun).

[–] MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world 23 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Build massive amounts of new housing. Give people paid parental leave, and universal healthcare. Guaranteed baby boom.

[–] IamSparticles@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago

You'd also have to subsidize childcare. It's crazy expensive.

[–] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 21 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

There is no housing shortage, just an abundance of greed. There are 14,000,000 empty homes in the USA and most are owned by corporations who hold them as part of a financial portfolio or hedge funds. Ban corporations from owning residential properties and the housing shortage will vanish without cutting down more trees and burning more fossil fuels.

[–] MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Idk man, around me it’s sprawling single family homes for miles, when it should be blocks and blocks of condos and town homes. The NIMBYs have prevented construction for decades and now a house costs $1.5m. There is a housing shortage. I think corporations recently taking an interest in buying houses is because the shortage makes their value appreciate so quickly. They’re like parasites taking advantage of the situation, not the root cause.

[–] BlackSheep@lemmy.ca 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

The corporations buying houses, and property, is exactly the root cause. If they own it all, they set the prices. It’s a cash cow. You pay, or you’re homeless. You pay $2500/month rent, but they won’t give you a mortgage where you would be paying $2000/month.

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[–] BlackSheep@lemmy.ca 3 points 15 hours ago

Agreed

[–] angrystego@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Do we really need a baby boom though? I agree we need affordable housing, everything you mentioned and more. At the same time I don't think the population should grow forever (so education and available birth control).

[–] MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I don’t disagree. I was just clarifying what would spur one.

Truthfully, we are fucked either way. The truth is having a baby boom would help the economy, but accelerate environmental degradation and the consequences of climate change, which will be extremely destabilizing to society and possibly lead to collapse.

But, if we don’t continue to grow the population, the capitalist world, based on a need for endless growth will falter. We will see less productivity and consumption, which will also be destabilizing to society as the economy shrinks or becomes stagnant. This is also destabilizing to society and could also create a collapse.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

$5k when having a kid costs $3k in insurance copays with a normal birth and average insurance. So you’re down to $2k before even leaving the hospital. This dude has all the intellectual depth and forethought of a mushroom.

[–] ChexMax@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

And The 2K is gone pretty quick purely from adding the baby to your insurance. Boo.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 10 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

$5k a month, right? Right?

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

Republicans killed a COVID era $3600/year child tax credit, letting it lapse in 2023 back to the 2018 amount of $2000, which was increased from $1000 as a replacement for the $5050 tax exemption parents used to be able to get before the 2017 Trump tax reforms. For a married couple whose combined income was between $75k and $150k, that $5k tax exemption was worth about $1250, so it was a bad trade for them (or anyone making more).

If Republicans were serious about financially incentivizing having children, they'll need to support the kids throughout the entire life cycle: healthcare for pregnant women, including through labor and deliver and post partum, support for families with young children (including parental leave mandates), subsidized daycare, good schools, parks and libraries, and economic stability (including in housing costs).

But they're not, so here we are.

[–] IamSparticles@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago

This would come closest to an actual incentive. Babies are not a one time expense.

[–] matdave@lemmy.ml 16 points 19 hours ago

Literally cost us $11k in medical bills to have a baby. That doesn't include the cost of actually maintaining it either. $5k is a JOKE

[–] pomfegranate@sh.itjust.works 21 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Why can't countries understand quality of life leads to more of those productive babies they really want

[–] OccamsRazer@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago

None of the developed countries have a replacement birth rate. Higher quality of life has lead to lower birth rate in all cases.

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[–] Mallspice@lemm.ee 6 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah girls don’t really wanna fuck like they do where/when abortions are an option and there’s no chance of legally being sentenced to death because of a still birth I’m shocked conservatives are too stupid to get this.

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[–] Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee 13 points 19 hours ago

Or they could just forgive the student loans haha, they are so stupid.

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 3 points 14 hours ago

We don't even have to ask the experts. Just look at Japan that tried something similar in the past. Of course it was a complete failure... This is basic reality, right? Families that don't have money simply can't afford to raise a child even if they get a bit of cash at the start. Pay them more than a living wage if you want them to have kids.

[–] PancakeTrebuchet@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (7 children)

My wife and I would consider another kid if the fed wanted to kick us an extra $25k per year.

A one time fee of $5K is hilarious. You'd maybe be able to cover the hospital bill from having the kid with that sum.

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[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 19 points 23 hours ago

I'm not American. I thought "$5k/month for sure". Lol.

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