Stannard: More babies, less help | Perspective

“I’ll be known as the fertilization president …”

— President Donald Trump

“Republicans are raiding child care funding — to push women out of the workforce.”

There appears to be a bit of a disconnect between what the current administration says it wants to do and what they’re actually doing.

On one hand, we have the president and vice president clamoring that we need to have more babies and the president who wants to be known as the fertilization president.

Currently, the world population is at 8,223,908,000. By the time this goes to print and you read it, there will be tens of thousands babies born worldwide. There were 270,000 births on the day this was written. Thus far this year, there have been 50,305,500 births and 23,705,000 deaths.

A population of 8 billion humans, “living essentially at the same standard of living, is going to demand far more resources than a population of 2 billion living at the same standard of living. Therefore, the population issue is nested within the larger problem of ecological overshoot. The unwelcome reality is, humanity is well into ecological overshoot, and has been since the early 1970s.”

It appears as though the maximum, sustainable global population is around 8 billion, which is where we are today. The statements above from 47 and Vance are designed to pander to the pro-life folks. But shouldn’t we be asking who’s going to take care of these babies?

It’s so expensive to live today that both parents have to work; some have more than one job just to keep their heads above water. It’s cruel and hypocritical to insist that young people have more and more babies, while simultaneously cutting government support for families and kids.

From the Guardian: “Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of child care for large swaths of the American working class. The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to child care funding are likely coming: Some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for day care. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.”

From ABC News: “One such proposal that has been pitched to White House advisers is a $5,000 ‘baby bonus’ to every American mother after she gives birth. ‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ President Donald Trump said Tuesday when asked about a $5,000 incentive for new mothers.”

How would this $5,000 “bonus” fly if only Black or brown people applied? What’s the real plan? The president has made it clear he would like to rid the nation of anyone and everyone he doesn’t like or those who say less-than-complimentary things about him. The $5,000 is peanuts. “According to recent research, the cost of raising a child can cost $23,000 per year as of 2024, which would equal $414,000 through age 18. That doesn’t include adjusting for inflation, nor does it include how much it costs to attend college.”

Is it not cruel and hypocritical to try to entice and/or coerce young people into having more and more babies, while pulling the rug of support out from underneath them? Should the Republicans be successful in passing their “Big Beautiful Bill,” they will be adding an additional $4 trillion to our debt. That’s on top of the $8 trillion 47 racked up in his first term. How are our kids going to handle this?

NPR reports: “Many more pronatalists, including Natal Con’s organizer, Kevin Dolan, see their biggest allies as those in the White House right now. Matthew McManus is an expert on the modern, hard-right thinkers whose ideas Dolan promotes. In these intellectual circles, McManus said, establishing a ‘masculine’ culture means rooting out feminism and multicultural democracy. ‘Women are to be subordinated to men. (They) largely are going to be responsible for managing the household, although with no real particular authority. And of course, they’re going to have an awful lot of children,’ said McManus.”

This isn’t just about having kids. It’s about putting women in their place — which is chained to the sink, being subservient to men, and serving only one purpose: breeding. Is this the kind of society that you voted for? If not, you had better get busy because it appears as though this is where we’re headed.

Bob Stannard lives in Manchester Center.