By Rachel Siegel
(c) 2024 , The Washington Post
Rebecca Frame had it all planned out: Buy a house with her husband and start a family soon after. But the pandemic, layoffs forher and him and drawn-down savings got in the way – leaving her determined to feel financially secure again.
For now, that means working toward an emergency fund of up to $120,000 and buying a car that’s more family-friendly than her Prius C. And it means putting off getting pregnant to “give my children what I had and more, in an economy where I didn’t think that was going to be possible.”
“It just makes sense to, yet again, bide our time basically in hopes of having more stability in the future,” said Frame, 29, who lives in northern Colorado. “Especially during covid, and still, I feel like my choice was taken away from me.”
The decision to have children never involves just one consideration. But for millions like Frame, the economic and financial toll of raising a family increasingly weighs on the choice. Between 2018 and 2023, there was a sharprise – from 37 to 47 percent – in the share of U.S. adults under 50 who don’t have kids and are unlikely to, according to a July Pew Research Center survey. Of those, 36 percent said they can’t afford children.
That demographic shift is now colliding with a growing political message from the right: Americans should be having more kids. Broadly speaking, this ideology is rooted in concerns over a declining native birth rate, which could later spiral into a shrinking labor force, aging population and smaller tax base. Immigration is not considered a solution by conservatives who tout this idea.
Such calls haven’t always been part of mainstream Republican politics. But they have been elevated by former president Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who is pushing for policies he describes as “pro-family,” like cutting childbirth costs and expanding the child tax credit. Vance has been pressed to clarify his views about children and families, especially becauseof a viral 2021 interview in which he chided women without children as “childless cat ladies.” He focused his criticism thenon top Democratic politicians like Vice President Kamala Harris, who is a stepmother, asking how it made “sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
At other times, he has drawn inspiration from far-right leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, whose government gave loans to couples who got married and forgave those payments if they had children.
“Why can’t we do that here?” Vance asked in a 2021 speech. “Why can’t we give resources to parents who tell us the only reason they’re not having kids is because they can’t afford it? This is a civilizational crisis.”
In a string of interviews last weekend, he slammed Democrats for being “anti-family.” He talked about letting states decide their own abortion policies, contrasting with Harris’s support for federal protections. And he falsely said vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz has proposed legislation that would take children from their parents if those parents don’t consent to gender-affirming care.
“Sometimes family doesn’t work out for people, and that’s okay,” Vance said Sunday on ABC News’s “This Week.” “But I do think that Kamala Harris herself has pursued some anti-family policies, and that is a problem and something we ought to push back against.”
But for many women, the challenge is not a “civilizational crisis.” Instead, it’s about reconciling a slew of major economic factors – inflation, job security, child care – with one of the most personal life decisions.
Runjini Murthy, 41, thought she would have children with a longtime boyfriend. But when that relationship ended in her late 30s, she thought through her own finances. Adding up the costs of college, health care, a savings plan and everything else that comes with raising a family, she couldn’t see how the math would work. Murthy, who lives in Oakland, also worried that if she did have kids and stayed home for a few years, she would have a hard time returning to the workforce.
She described Vance’s comments, and the broader pressure for women to do it all, as “a worldview, not a one-off.”
“I’m old enough that a lot of what we were told is, ‘You have to get married and have kids, and if you haven’t by a certain time, you’re this weird anomaly,’” Murthy said. “It hits a tender spot.”
The pandemic and its aftermath have put particular focus on the “care economy,” including affordable child care and benefits like paid family leave. Generally, Republicans tout lowering taxes as a way to help give the middle class more breathing room. Vance often talks about the surprise bills he and his wife received after having their second child and how that kind of financial toll discourages others from having kids. (More recently, as he was being considered asTrump’s running mate, Vance broke off talks on bipartisan legislation to cut some childbirth costs.) Earlier this month, Vance also suggested the child tax credit be raised from $2,000 per child to $5,000.
In a statement, Vance campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said that the GOP vice-presidential nominee “knows what it’s like to struggle financially” and that families are being “crushed” by high inflation.
“JD is committed to making it easier to start a family and raise children in this country,” Van Kirk said. “The affordability crisis that exploded on Kamala Harris’s watch was easily preventable, and it can be easily reversed by electing President Trump and Senator Vance this November.”
In an interview with Fox News this month, Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, said that the point is to encourage policies that make it easier to be a parent, and that her husband never intended to hurt people who want children and struggle to have them. “There are a lot of other reasons people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good,” she said.
Meanwhile, Harris has promised to revive parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda – including on the care economy – that didn’t become law because of concerns from Republicans and centrist Democrats over the price tag and inflation. On Friday, Harris unveiled a populist string of proposals, including a tax credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life. She is also calling to restore a Biden administration credit that expired at the end of 2021, which raised the benefit for most families from $2,000 per child to $3,000.
Her campaign is also pushing to expand paid family leave, housing assistance, child care and elder care. That message is being amplified by Walz, who as Minnesota governor signed a paid family and medical leave bill into law, along with a state child tax credit.
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesman Joseph Costello said the Democratic nominee has centered her vision on working- and middle-class families, contrasting that approach with the Trump team’s.
“Their dangerous plans will hurt the very families Vice President Harris fights for every day: gutting child care, dismantling public education, and raising costs on the middle class. As the Vice President says, we cannot go back,” Costello said.
Ultimately, experts say state policies have enormous influence over what the care economy looks like. Among wealthy nations, the United States is an outlier in not having a federal policy for paid family leave; only 13 states and Washington, D.C., have passed their own laws. Fifteen states have their own form of a child tax credit, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. (This month, Senate Republicans blocked an expansion of the federal child tax credit for the lowest-income families.)
Six states and D.C. have implemented universal preschool for 4-year-olds, with D.C. and Vermont providing access to 3-year-olds, according to the National Women’s Law Center. And in 39 states and D.C., the average annual price of child care for an infant in a center exceeded annual in-state university tuition.
“If you look at the structural environment families are operating in, 73 percent of people don’t have paid family leave through their jobs in this country,” said Melissa Boteach, an expert on child care and income security at the NWLC. “The cost of child care is more than in-state college tuition in most states. We are not a family-friendly country despite all these claims to put family first.”
Those who do not have children often feel that they reap economic benefits: About 8 in 10 people under 50 unlikely to have children said it was easier for them to afford the things they want; 75 percent said they could more easily save for the future, according to the Pew study. About 6 in 10 said it was easier to be successful in their careers.
Stephanie Reneau, 45, never wanted children but said that “the financial aspects were like a bonus.” She spent her 20s road-tripping across the country and now has the freedom to buy a new car or splurge on a vacation.
Reneau grew up in Ohio in what she described as a Christian nationalist household. Women were taught to abstain from sex until they got married. At 16, Reneau said, she was raped at a party. Her mother blamed her and said Reneau better not get pregnant because her motherdidn’t want to take care of the baby. Abortion was not an option.
Reneau said she sees clear overlap with the way she was raised and the larger political message encouraging people to have children.
“That’s the most anti-family thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.