Baby Bust

When I was growing up, American women had lots and lots of babies. Most of my friends came from families with at least three children, and often four or five or more.

Fast forward several decades to 2025, and the U.S. birthrate has reached a historic low, continuing a 17-year trend of decline. This is a significant problem because America’s current fertility rate of approximately 1.6 births per woman over her lifetime is below the level needed the sustain the population.

A shrinking population has broad implications. If the birth rate continues its downward slide, enough future workers to sustain our economy and support Medicare and Social Security will never be born.

Finally, though, it appears that policy makers are sitting up and paying attention. There are bipartisan proposals for expanded child tax credits and baby bonuses. The Trump Administration is floating the idea of accounts that would provide parents of newborns with $1,000 to invest for their child’s future.

Big wow. Delivering those babies in American hospitals is expensive. (Even if you have insurance, the average out-of-pocket cost for a vaginal birth is $2,655. Without insurance, the cost would range from $9,000 to $17,000.) Feeding, clothing, and educating those children until age 18 (and usually beyond) is expensive. Economic uncertainty abounds today, too, so it’s no surprise that an increasing number of women in the U.S. are opting out of the baby-production market.

But modern American mothers have essentially been on their own since at least 1945, when World War II ended and so did the government-funded child care that allowed women to leave home and work in the munitions factories that produced the bombs and tanks and airplanes that helped win the war.

Eighty years later, most working mothers in the U.S. continue to be in the same precarious situation: no guaranteed paid family leave, unlike every other developed country in the world, and no guaranteed help with child care. (American families today spend thousands of dollars annually on full-day care, sometimes up to $15,000 or more, for just one child.)

We might not be in this predicament today, by the way, if Richard Nixon hadn’t vetoed the bipartisan Comprehensive Child Development Act in 1971, which would have provided a national child care system.

Not all women want to have babies, of course. Some women are choosing to have a career instead of kids. Social and cultural changes have also made it more acceptable for women today to have fewer babies – or no babies at all.

But if politicians such as Vice-President J.D. Vance want American women to birth more babies, it’s time to re-examine and update that failed 1971 legislation – and this time, make sure it’s not vetoed. Throw in guaranteed family leave and other aids that will help women who struggle to maneuver both home and work responsibilities. Pressure employers to enact policies that make it easier for their female employees to work.

Half-hearted measures are no longer useful. They never were. Real family-friendly policies are long past due, and having large numbers of women in positions of political power in this country just might help us get those policies – at long last.