A conservative critic branded the Trump administration's proposed incentives to encourage Americans to have more babies as something out of a Soviet-era Eastern Bloc country.
On CNN's Inside Politics Tuesday, Dana Bash cited a New York Times article about the administration's ideas to bolster the birthrate, that include $5,000 bonuses to new mothers, menstrual education programs, and a "Medal of Motherhood" for parents with six or more children.
"My view on this, has been that surveys for decades have shown that Americans would like to have more kids than they end up having," said The Washington Post's Ramesh Ponnuru. "And, so, the the thing that we need to be looking at as policymakers or people who are interested in this, is, how do we remove the obstacles that are keeping people from achieving their goals for their families, not trying to change their minds or socially engineer an outcome for them, which starts to look, frankly, weird and creepy."
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Ponnuru continued, "And I think that this thing about, you know, the Mother of the Year — it sounds like something that would have come out of Ceausescu's Romania, and not something that is going to go over well in America, something that is not going to move the culture in a more pro-child direction, but again, make it look weird."
Bash added that "economic reasons" are keeping many parents from having more childen.
"It is expensive to have children!" Bash exclaimed. "It is very — especially in cities — and it's expensive just to kind of live life as a single person. But then when you add children, the inflation that we're seeing, everything that has built up over time makes it very difficult. And that is a big reason why women and men, parents make choices, perhaps to have smaller families."
Leigh Ann Caldwell with Puck submitted that a lack of support for child care or paid leave is a problem.
"It's nice to have a $5,000 bonus to help out, but it's probably not enough," Caldwell said, while Ponnuru added, "Housing is too scarce. That's a big problem — that's a factor."