Far from just the tax break, young people need the courage to have children. There are many sources for this boost, not the least of which is monetary.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Hennessey argues to the contrary, that explicit financial incentive precludes real change in fertility. “One thing’s for certain,” he writes: “Tax policy has nothing to do with it.” The solution is in the culture, “in families and churches, not Congress.” Global fertility rates remain low in the face of generous child tax credits and baby bonuses, so why center U.S. family policy around them? As for pronatalists, generally: “Their motives are pure. It’ll never work.”
All sorts of policy initiatives fall under Hennessy’s outlook. He rejects an expanded child tax credit on the basis that it is indirect and ineffective, despite robust papers indicating otherwise, such as this one from the Institute for Family Studies. As a result, downstream effects from fertility-adjacent policies lose credibility.
Most notable is the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for sexually explicit online content. Pornography use surely affects the fertility rate, think of the level of pornography addiction demonstrated in society, and the antisocialism, dehumanization, and psychological and physical dysfunctions that accompany it. Yet the age verification technology that can govern it is still being developed, has easy workarounds, and doesn’t strike at the root of our pornography problem. By Hennessy’s estimation, Paxton might be a worthless attempt to legislate fertility.
Apart from pure payout, credits and the like give young couples the confidence to have children. Help over the first financial hill isn’t why a couple might have children, but to prospective first-time parents, that initial shock is the scariest part. Today’s youth are over-rational, cautious, and highly critical. They want what works, because they’ve seen what hasn’t. That tendency manifests itself in the traditional, religious interest we see among them, but it also comes out in their neurotic reliance on self-classification. Hennessy’s alternative solution, that “somehow we manage to get by. People always do,” will be consoling and steadying, but it won’t prompt the youth to take a risk.
With that, liberal mothers are the ones who most induce public fear around motherhood. After surveying them, the New York Times concluded that “Motherhood Should Come With a Warning Label,” and sent the idea out to the world as the normative impression. Mostly, these women want the status that money brings to a profession. That motherhood doesn’t confer it is a deep cultural issue, especially concerning the value of life, but it is also a messaging problem. Part of their dissatisfaction follows the same reasoning that might deter younger people: family formation seems to require a very measured approach.
NO PLATFORMS FOR THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY
If the argument is that we need cultural change more than anything else, it’s correct, but short-term economic incentives have their own role in that goal. Take one look at how much of the public discourse surrounds family formation. It is clear that campaign talk of tax credits started and sustains the sense of urgency surrounding the issue.
Conservatives, especially those who prioritize Hennessey’s “mentorship of example,” need a voice in the financial incentive discussion. It will go on with or without us, and if without us, the volume of equal pay and in vitro fertilization affordability will drown out anything more sensible. The question is what is worth the extra tax, not whether it will affect the family.