The Failure Of “Pro-Natal Policies.”

On 3/10/2021, a Twitter user named @HannahCox7 said the following regarding her financial situation:

The federal government is basically forcing me into getting married and having kids to avoid being absolutely cleaned out by their punitive tax burden. And that’s sexist. The tax code is sexist.

The response to this tweet was typical, with many right-wing populists informing her that actually, this makes perfect sense, and, in fact, her tax burden should be much higher:

“The government incentivizes me to do something that helps out our entire country!!! THATS [sic] SEXIST!” You can also just adopt kids moron. — @Endernax_

Childless people should be progressively taxed more the older they get. People with children are providing a future for the nation and their people and should be taxed much less for every child born. — @ProgenyOfEurope

“Conservative” woman whines about incentivizing the growth of the family as “sexist”, or something. She should log off Twitter and start a family of her own — the science shows she’d be quite happier if she did! — @RedEaglePatriot

Hannah’s tweet, as well as the reaction to it, have been stuck in my head since I first read it. Let’s ignore rather you agree with her description of these policies as “sexist,” and instead ask an important question: what is the end result of child tax credits and the like?

This topic is also rather important now because of the stimulus. For those unaware, the Stimulus signed into law by President Biden last week gives families with children various forms of financial aid. This post from r/childfree from a user named Oceanvisions under the title “Stimulus for everyone vs BIG stimulus for breeders” (“Breeder” being the derogatory term they use for parents) gives you a basic idea of how many who do not have children are reacting to it:

$1400 if you’re childfree, $5000+ if you have a kid. Having a massive amount of extra funds go to ONLY parents is blatantly discriminatory. They CHOSE to have children, why not give everyone the same amount, and those with kids can take it out of their share? Essentially getting punished for not having children is insane.

Here’s the thing: Although I am not an “anti-natalist” (or someone who believes reproduction is wrong) I still do not believe that this person should have children. I do not believe that the people at r/childfree should have children, and I do not believe we should be encouraging them to have children if they are so dedicated to not having them. If the people at a subreddit like this, a place dedicated to not having children, were to have children, it’s likely that — to put it simply — they would not be very good parents.

However, the idea of tax credits for children has become increasingly popular. Hungary implemented tax credits for children a few years ago (and the results were rather underwhelming), and the United States has them in some form since 1998. Populists of both parties have campaigned for expanding this credit, with the Bernie Sanders campaign declaring its support for paid parental leave. Andrew Yang promised in 2020 that his Universal Basic Income would allow women to become stay-at-home mothers once again, bringing a small amount of social conservativism back into the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Warren, another 2020 Presidential Candidate, has been a long critic of what she dubs “the two-income trap,” to the point where she wrote a book under this title.

The idea of these policies is typically announced as increasing the fertility rate of a nation. However, why is a high fertility rate a universal good? The nation with the highest fertility rate on Earth is Niger (with a fertility rate of over seven births per woman), are you telling me that we would be better off if we were more like them?

Of course, the idea that people need a tax-credit to reproduce is absurd. No other species reproduce sexually, nor the people of most nations, nor the people of the United States before 1998, ever needed a tax-credit to have children. However, all of a sudden, the people of this nation will only have children if a tax credit is given to them.

It’s funny that many of these same people say “the economy isn’t everything,” because they want to make the economy everything. Yet, they want to make it so every decision they deem good is supported by the economy, therefore giving it complete control over our lives. As it happens, I also believe that the economy isn’t everything, and as such, I believe that some decisions, even if they are good, do not have to lead to economic prosperity.

However, what if a parent who has no interest in raising a child has one just for a tax credit? This is something that has played out in history, and the results have not been pretty. Italy under Mussolini famously implemented various “pro-natal policies” including giving a woman a medal if she had a certain number of children. The women were not given awards for raising the children, because the intention was not that the women would raise their children, but instead that they would become breeding machines pumping out babies for the state to raise. The parents were encouraged to be apathetic, to take a backseat, and allow the government to take over all forms of parenting.

You know who clearly loves their children, the people of China. Specifically, the people of China who had a second child during the One Child Policy, or who have a third child now that two children are allowed. Those people risk prison and possibly their own life to bring a child into the world, meanwhile we demand the government take away any financial burden that comes with having children.

This leads to the one question we in the west need to be asking: Do parents in the West still love their children? Once upon a time, loving your child met be willing to make various sacrifices for them, now it means demanding the government give you money for having them.

Now, I’m not saying that all parents today hate their children — such a statement would be insane — but I am saying that government policy encourages commodification of children like never before, and that we’re on verge of creating more of that as opposed to less. Turning children into an economic boon does make it so more people have children, but at what cost? Having more people reproduce is not by default a good thing, especially considering all it does is make more bad parents.