In his May 13 essay, Delano Squires asserts that “The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage — the union of one man and one woman — is its cornerstone. It is the seedbed of self-government.”
True enough.
But what happens when the government plants the seeds of dependency inside that seedbed? And what happens when conservatives join the Left in trying to plant those seeds?
Squires mentions how the massive expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s damaged the American family. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society has been disastrous for the institution of marriage and for the families caught in the welfare trap.
In 1964, when Johnson announced his ambition to build a Great Society to end poverty, only 7% of babies were born to unmarried mothers. Today, that number is 40%.
Johnson saw himself as the savior of poor families, but his Great Society welfare programs created a cycle of government dependency that shattered the bonds of countless families. Rather than sowing the seeds of family development, Johnson sowed the very weeds that choked out the institution he purportedly sought to reinforce.
Squires has written and spoken eloquently about how the expansion of the welfare state has led millions of low-income households to try to replace husbands and fathers with the federal government.
But unfortunately, instead of calling for an overhaul of the welfare system that has done so much harm, Squires’s essay promotes the Heritage Foundation’s call to expand welfare to more traditional families. Heritage’s report, “Saving America by Saving the American Family,” proposes new government transfer programs. Squires describes one program as potentially providing “the type of financial security that would go a long way to help newlyweds, especially in working-class and low-income communities where the married, two-parent families are a relic of the past.”
Concerns about marriage penalties in the welfare system and the decline in married fertility are justified. But the conservative answer isn’t to add more welfare for married parents, it’s to ensure that welfare only goes to Americans who are truly in need and that welfare doesn’t afford a more comfortable lifestyle than work.
True welfare reform removes the debilitating influence of government from the seedbed of self-government. Heritage’s approach would only plant the seeds of dependence in more seedbeds. The report calls for $17,670 in baby bonuses for married parents and $22,087 for parents having their third (or higher) child.
Redistributing more money won’t fix American families.
When has a government transfer program ever strengthened the family?
In the early 2020s, Hungary’s then-Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the poster child for advocates of family subsidies. Hungary implemented a host of supposedly pro-family subsidies that altogether add up to a massive 5% of its economy, equivalent to the United States spending almost $46,000 on every family with children. Orban stated that the goal was to raise the country’s fertility rate to 2.1 by 2030. Hungarian fertility rates briefly hit 1.6 in 2021.
But Hungary’s rebound in fertility rates was short-lived. The fertility rate fell to about 1.3 in 2025, near all-time lows. Last year, Hungary recorded just 72,000 births, the lowest on record since 1949. Meanwhile, Hungary has struggled with a ballooning deficit, and its economy has lagged behind other European countries.
Washington Examiner senior political columnist Tim Carney speculated that Orban’s falling approval rating may have contributed to falling fertility: “The more the government promotes family, the more young Hungarians might associate marriage and baby-making with Orban, which could be a significant negative these days.”
When the government puts a price on babies, it cheapens the blessing of children. It’s hard to imagine a more perilous foundation on which to build a family than one based on a government check.
When he called for the Great Society, Johnson said, “There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want.”
RESTORING AMERICA: CONGRESS SHOULDN’T CREATE ANOTHER NEWBORN BENEFIT
Lofty words. But instead of reshaping civilization into his envisioned Great Society, Johnson’s programs twisted and warped the foundations that undergird our civilization.
Conservatives should be wary of new calls to empower the federal government to engineer civilization socially. At best, such interventions would be costly failures. At worst, the progressive Left could revamp the programs to fulfill their own social objectives when they come to power.
Preston Brashers is a research fellow with the Plymouth Institute at Advancing American Freedom.