Baby Bonuses Won’t Save America
To solve the problem of declining birth rates, we need a deep cultural renewal, not superficial policy fixes
As Mother’s Day approaches, some observers have found cause for celebration: The birth rate has recently ticked upward. Barely—last year saw a 1% increase in U.S. births, with women in their 30s and 40s stepping in where younger generations have steadily stepped away. Pro-natalist commentators and government spokespeople are eagerly celebrating the change, as if this small uptick signifies a reversal, as if a decades-long demographic decline can now be reshaped into a narrative of resurgence.
But the numbers tell a harder truth. The long-term trend is still downward, not a sudden drop but a sustained retreat. And the real collapse is not in fertility technologies or economic incentives. It is in desire: a quiet, collective decision not to bring life forward. Birth rates among women in their 20s, once the defining demographic for family formation, are now at record lows. The average age of first-time mothers continues to rise, and while in vitro fertilization and other technologies have extended the biological window, they have not solved the underlying dilemma. In fact, they may have prolonged it. Delayed the reckoning. Postponed the realization that we are not simply failing to build a world conducive to having children; we are in many ways actively dismantling that world.
And now, faced with the consequences, America is scrambling for solutions. But most proposed fixes are unserious: baby bonuses, ovulation awareness classes, national medals of motherhood, IVF subsidies paired with cuts to maternal health services. It is a patchwork of contradictions dressed up as policy. Throwing incentives at a crisis of meaning is like tossing fertilizer onto scorched earth. Nothing takes root. Nothing will grow.
Demography is not just about numbers. It is about trust. It is about what people believe about the future. Do they feel safe enough to commit, stable enough to provide? Do they see life as something to pass on, or something to survive? The Western world, and now much of the developed East, has ceased to reproduce itself. This phenomenon is not due to one cause but to a convergence of factors, including economic precarity, housing that slips further out of reach, politics that inspire no loyalty, institutions that no longer bind, and the steady, grinding atomization of modern life.
The Trump administration, now surrounded by advisers aligned with the pro-natalist movement, has made clear its intent to reverse this trend. The administration is correct to sound the alarm. There is no economic future without people. There is no functioning state, no retirement system, no cultural continuity without births. Population decline doesn’t just mean fewer babies. It means fewer workers, fewer carers, fewer taxpayers. It means dependency ratios that make the welfare state unsustainable. It means national decline that no innovation or immigration wave will fully offset. But what the administration offers as a remedy cannot succeed because the real problem is not the price of diapers. It is the disappearance of conviction.
Trump’s advisers speak of “restoring the family,” but you cannot restore what you have never understood. Family is not a slogan. It is not a tax category. It is the most demanding and rewarding human structure in history. And it isn't built on bonuses or applause. It is built with sacrifice, duty and the willingness to defer personal gratification for something greater than oneself.
What political leadership today fails to grasp is that people are not just failing to have children. They are struggling to see why they should. In a culture that celebrates choice but not commitment, autonomy but not obligation, reproduction is increasingly seen as optional at best and self-destructive at worst. To become a parent is to assume responsibility in a world that no longer champions it.
And yet, all the while, governments double down on economic levers. They imagine that because birth rates once rose alongside prosperity, the trick now is to subsidize prosperity’s trappings. Give mothers money, they suggest, and they’ll give you babies. It’s mechanistic, it’s naïve and it fails to see what has changed.
This isn’t 1950, or even 1990. Fertility is no longer about means; it’s about meaning. No generation in history has had more tools, more wealth or more information than today’s. But no generation in modern history has had so little faith in its own future. No generation has seemed so anxious, so atomized, so unclear on its place in the world. Birth rates don’t collapse because people can’t do the math. They collapse because people no longer see the point.
This is where the real work begins—not with baby bonuses or public medals, but with serious cultural introspection. If a country wants more children, it must become the kind of place where children are wanted. That means stable, affordable and secure housing. It means a labor market that does not demand all your energy while offering very little purpose. It means men who are employable, emotionally literate and capable of fatherhood. It means women who are not told, subtly or explicitly, that motherhood is a professional liability. It means religious and civic institutions that offer structures of belonging that do not dissolve under the slightest pressure. It means a political culture that does not reduce the family to “values” in speeches while gutting it in budgets.
No Western government will reverse its declining birth rate without confronting the deeper truth. This is not merely an economic dilemma; it is, I suggest, a spiritual crisis, a slow cultural erosion. Though superficial actions like baby bonuses won’t solve the problem, serious policy steps can and must be taken. Maternity care systems need rebuilding. Infertility research deserves proper funding. Women who choose to chart their natural fertility should have more substantial support. Housing and child care must be treated as foundations, not luxuries. None of these, on their own, will create a cultural shift, but they can clear the debris that blocks the way forward.
Of course, policy cannot manufacture meaning. It cannot legislate a shared sense of purpose. It cannot resurrect a culture that no longer believes in continuity. The act of bringing a child into the world must once again be seen as not reckless, but redemptive. Not an act of naïveté, but of trust. We need to relearn how to trust in something beyond the self and trust that the future is worth stepping into.
 | A guest post by
|