Why conservatives should pay parents to stay home |
Key takeaways
• Conservative policymakers say they want more parents to stay home with their children, but it’s not clear that approaches like baby bonuses or bigger child tax will work.
• One possibility is to pay lower-income parents to stay home, potentially by pairing a national paid parental leave program with no-strings-attached cash allowance for new parents. Such a policy would also help to address infant care shortages.
• The focus of any plan to pay parents to stay home should be on providing a choice, not incentivizing one option or the other.
MAGA thinks the country needs more stay-at-home parents, especially mothers. The goal isn’t just to boost plummeting birth rates, but to help children and families with policies that are more family-focused than work-focused. “It’s not just about increasing the total number of children,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told the New York Times. “It is increasing the number of families, mothers and fathers, and the ability of the family to spend time together.”
Over the past several months, Republican lawmakers and conservative thinkers have offered a number of bills and ideas to help more parents stay home with kids. But as Vox journalist Anna North noted, none are likely to trigger a stampede of moms from cubicles to kitchens. When North asked whether baby bonuses or heftier child tax credits could persuade women to give up the benefits gained through decades of paid work, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin deadpanned: “Are we giving them a million dollars?”
Still, conservatives need not give up the dream. If they want more parents at home, the most effective way may be to focus their efforts and pay on low-wage parents.
My reporting on families has pointed repeatedly to this group of parents as one especially willing to reduce paid work to spend more time with their children, if given the chance, and for whom a little investment could go a long way. Such investment could help address the child care shortage, bolster child development, and create more family-friendly workplaces and more vibrant neighborhoods.
Our national obsession with seeing poor mothers work
Of course, there is one very obvious hurdle to this idea: historically, poor parents — and especially single mothers of color — are the group that US lawmakers have been most eager to see working for pay.
“There are a lot of folks who pay lip service to believing moms should be home with their kids, but don’t seem to think that applies to people with very low income,” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, formerly of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and an expert on public benefits.
Take cash assistance for low-income parents. For decades, the so-called mothers’ pensions were available primarily to white widowed and abandoned moms. Caseworkers routinely discriminated against Black and other nonwhite mothers, often presuming they should work while the white moms shouldn’t. After the civil rights movement made welfare available to all parents who needed it, lawmakers quickly imposed stringent work requirements and time limits on parents seeking financial help. Even in proudly progressive cities like New York, mothers were routinely pushed to take the first job they found, regardless of how long the commute, how late the hours, or how low the pay.
While the Clinton-era reform succeeded in forcing new moms into paid work, their babies and toddlers suffered.