Way back in nineteen seventy one, congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill, which would have created a public childcare program for all American parents. Sadly, a program that would have been a great benefit to poor and working class households was vetoed by President Nixon. The reason he gave was that he didn't want a "communal approach to child-rearing." He also added that it would have "family-weakening implications."
Last February, Utah Senator Mitt Romney proposed a universal monthly payment of three hundred and fifty dollars per child to families with children. His proposal went nowhere, as members of his own party attacked the idea, calling it “welfare assistance”.
Recently Democrats in congress unveiled a three and half trillion dollar spending bill that would, if passed, be the biggest social spending plan since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the nineteen sixties. Along with trying to fight climate change, a significant portion of the bill is reserved for spending on a national childcare program plus a generous paid leave program for new parents. The bill will have to pass through reconciliation in the Senate, which means that it will probably have to undergo some cuts before all the Democratic Senators will support it. The support of all the Democrats is necessary because the Republican party will inevitably unanimously vote against it.
Equally relevant is the fact that recent population studies have found that Americans are having fewer and fewer children in the past few years. While there are a number of reasons that American fertility rates are down, from better sex education, more birth control choices and more women wanting to focus on their careers, one of the main reasons is that having children in America is expensive. And it's an expense that Republicans (except for Romney) have done nothing to relieve in years. Yes, the party that wraps itself in family values refuses to do anything to help poor and working class families and those families have responded by having less children.
I find it amusing that some conservatives have responded to the country's lowering birth rate with alarm, failing to see that it's the inevitable result of their anti-family policies. Just take a look at our lack of paid national maternity leave: the US is one of the few countries in the world to not have any national maternity program. Instead, we allow twelve weeks of unpaid leave for women who work at companies with more than fifty people, and no mandatory leave at all for women who work at companies with less than fifty workers. Oh sure, women who work at high paying jobs often get paid leave, but women in poor or low paying jobs have little or no choice but to go back to work just a short time after giving birth. So it's no surprise that so many women are saying no to motherhood or having less children.
Why do conservatives fail to understand this contradiction? Part of it may be that they're still stuck in the fifties mentality that dictates that the most successful families are ones in which dad goes to work and mom stays home with the kids. The fact that the country's growing income gap and stagnant wages for the middle class means that many families can't even afford to live this way anymore doesn't seem to enter into their thinking.
A more cynical reason is that conservative politicians oppose these programs because the wealthy corporations that pay for their campaigns don't want them to exist. And, as long as the Republican party is able to convince middle class white voters to support them while doing nothing to help the middle class, they can just keep right on doing nothing to make child rearing a little less expensive for our families. They just shouldn't be so surprised when those families respond by having fewer or no children.
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