The self-proclaimed “fertilization president” continues to address women’s ever-waning interest in having children with all of the skill, care and knowledge of … well, someone who would willingly dub themselves the “fertilization president.”
It was announced this week that, in a bid to get American women to have more children – as the U.S. birth rate falls to an historic low – President Donald Trump’s administration has begun weighing a litany of ideas to incentivize them into motherhood, each one worse than the last.
Some on his team are calling for 30% of federally funded Fulbright scholarships to be earmarked for recipients who are married or have children. Another idea calls for government-run programs that teach women about their menstrual cycles – largely in a bid to help them know when they’re most fertile. Then, there’s the thought of giving $5,000 “baby bonuses” to American moms post-delivery.
(There was also the notion of awarding “National Medals of Motherhood” to moms with six or more kids, a concept so condescending and hollow I confess I laughed out loud when I read it.)
Look, I understand that Trump and his team are not concerned with women’s actual feelings on this matter. To them, we are just incubators, complete with an exact price tag. But we women caregivers get no real support from the society in which we live – and we’re so, so sick of it.
For starters, there are viable ideas that activists have been calling for for years, which would undoubtedly make parenthood a more appealing prospect to take on. Think improved paid maternal leave programs, universal childcare in any form, and increased remote-work flexibility.
There’s a significant financial piece of all of this, to be sure. In a nation where the average out-of-pocket cost for in-hospital labor and delivery comes to just under $3,000, and the average family pays about $350 for daycare per week, a one-time $5,000 “bonus” is frankly offensive. Plus, many women need to contribute to households financially – yet motherhood hamstrings our professional development, and we are consistently underpaid regardless.
When we’re paid for our work at all, that is, as women also continue to shoulder the majority of unpaid childcare, eldercare and domestic labor.
But worst and most insidious of all is that the people making this push have already taken away nationwide abortion access while gutting programs that offer family planning support and services – not only revoking the right to make choices about our own lives in many parts of the U.S., but then making healthcare itself harder to access, and the process of carrying and birthing children more dangerous, even deadly.
In short: Team Trump wants women to have more children in an ever-more dangerous context, and then to shut up and be happy about shouldering the lioness’ share of the lunches and laundry while struggling to make ends meet. But hey, at least some small percentage of us will be able to pursue Fulbright scholarships – provided they can afford and secure childcare, that is.
As members of younger generations might say: Please be serious.
We women caregivers are, of course, motivated out of great love to do all that we do for others. To bear and then raise the children, to care for those around us in whatever ways we’re able. The love is what keeps us going. But it’s hard. It’s really hard. And sometimes love is not enough – not when it comes to paying bills on time, or keeping our children safe.
Why wouldn’t an increasing number of women opt out of that struggle? Especially considering they live in a world where it is already harder for them to exist by every conceivable metric, simply because they are women – before you even add kids to the mix?
If you want women to feel excited about building this type of life – about building life – then you need to turn that prospect into something one would objectively want, something in which we’d be truly supported. Definitely keep the $5,000. (Or, give it to us anyway, and call it back pay for a few years of that gender-wage-gap nonsense.) And throw the menstrual courses directly in the trash, next to the discarded pads and tampons where they belong.
If you want us to be mothers, then offer us real help. No medals necessary. ◼️
