Trump's baby bonus won't work — but we already know the real solution



People are finally noticing that there aren’t as many children as there used to be.

Because demography is destiny when it comes to the future — as opposed to, say, climate science or fortune cookies — even people who don’t like children are alarmed. In case you’ve not heard, times have changed. We’ve gone from worrying about a population bomb to fretting about a population bust. The fertility rate is tanking.

We know what happened — we just don't want to admit it: Our society lost faith in God.

The math is simple: We need every woman to bear at least 2.1 children to maintain a steady population, or about two children to replace every man and woman alive. The 0.1 accounts for the sad fact that some children don’t live to see adulthood.

Let this sink in: I said every woman, not some women. Every. Single. Woman.

Of course, there have always been childless women. But other women have always made up the difference. We must be blunt: Our distaste for reality is acute. For every woman who does not bear children, there must be two women who have three or another who has four. You might not like the math, but too bad.

I know this is an unpopular message. Just mention the facts, and feminists clutch copies of "The Handmaid's Tale" to their breasts.

So how bad is it? Here are the numbers: Last year, the fertility rate in the United States dropped to 1.62 children per woman. But in the global race to zero, we're a laggard.

By comparison, here are a few other nations:

  • The United Kingdom: 1.53
  • Hungary: 1.5
  • Switzerland: 1.44
  • Greece: 1.34
  • Chile: 1.17
  • China: 1.02
  • Singapore: 0.97
  • South Korea: 0.75

While it is true that the global population continues to rise, that's because people are taking longer to die. And despite the best efforts of Bryan Johnson and Ray Kurzweil (a couple of "don't die" techno-utopians), the death rate is still 100%. This means that the global population, when it finally begins to do gown, will drop like a rock.

For some people, this is great news. They don't like kids anyway, and they're not too sure about the rest of us. But the implications are bad for everything from social welfare to technological innovation to even personal happiness.

We've been fooling ourselves. Social Security and your retirement savings are not replacements for children (i.e., the original retirement plan). Young adults with children to feed do most of the consuming and innovating in any economy. And with fewer children, we're likely to experience economic stagnation and decline for the foreseeable future.

There are naysayers — there always are. In this case, techno-utopians assure us that AI and robots will fill the gaps. But Elon Musk (of all people) isn't so sanguine. And while he is doing his part (with 14 children), no one would call him "Dad of the Year." He scatters his seed like Genghis Khan. His children will have the best of everything, I'm sure, but what they won't have is a father in the home. Honest sociologists and psychologists (not easy to find) say this is one of the most important factors when raising healthy children, a fact people don't like to admit.

So what do we do?

Recently, the Trump administration floated the idea of a $5,000 incentive for every baby born. Really? Back in 2017, a Department of Agriculture study estimated that raising a child to the age of 17 would cost a whopping $233,610. While that number is absurd in its own right, no one denies that children are expensive.

The U.S. is not the first to try to incentivize childbearing. Some countries, such as Hungary and South Korea, have been doing it for a while.

The question is: Does it work? But as you noticed from the fertility rate numbers above, no. The incentives have barely moved the needle in those countries.

But why doesn't it work? People desperate for answers wonder what is responsible for the declining birth rates. Sperm counts? Something in the air?

While environmental toxins do contribute to infertility, the real culprit is modernity itself. It is the most powerful sterilization drug ever invented. In our thoroughly modern "have it your way" world, people aren't even getting married — let alone having children. It's the same everywhere. In fact, it's even more the case in the Orient than in the Occident. Turns out, China did not need that "one-child" policy. They finally eliminated it, but modernity cemented it.

Let's get real. People don't have children for the money, and declining fertility can't be explained away by falling sperm counts. We know what happened — we just don't want to admit it.

Our society lost faith in God.

Secularists know this, but it makes them uneasy. In 2011, sociologist Eric Kaufmann wrote the book "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century." The book has barely received a modest four-star rating on Amazon. Not because he isn't right — but precisely because he is.

Kaufmann's message is clear: Even in the modern world, religious people have children — and lots of them. Because of their high fertility rates, the future belongs to them.

Religious people have a lot of children because they believe that life has meaning and purpose and that the sacrifices required to bring new life into the world are worth it. In the modern world, with its emphasis on markets and quantifiable things, religious faith is dismissed as nothing more than a matter of personal taste. But if you ask people of devout faith, they would never say it like that, because religious faith isn't concerned with personal preferences but with reality itself.

The faithful don't believe in their religions because they're "fulfilling." They believe in them because they think they're true.

Christianity doesn't have a corner on the pro-natal market, but it does have a long and illustrious history of encouraging childbearing and raising children in the faith. Recently, liberal churches have equivocated on this, and some are downright hostile to traditional forms of family life.

But those churches are dying. It won't be long before they're nothing more than cautionary tales.

I'm honored to serve a church in one of America's most liberal states. Despite this, our church has many large and growing families. I estimate the fertility rate in my congregation to be approximately four children per woman. Some women, of course, have more than four children. Fathers in my congregation take an active role in not only providing for their children, but raising them as well.

My church is not isolated. When I travel, I see the same phenomenon playing out in churches across the country. Churches are growing, those that believe children are a heritage from the Lord.

Our churches, of course, aren't heaven on earth, and we don't live in epistemic bubbles. My wife and I come from families made up largely of academics and artists, so we're accustomed to "alternative lifestyles." In fact, we have many childless relatives who are bitter, lonely, and oddly self-righteous. They think they can gin up the purpose of their lives out of their own desires. But they're failing — clearly.

The future doesn't belong to them, and, frankly, they don't care. Progressives don't live for tomorrow. They live for the present moment. Religious people, on the other hand — the traditionally religious — live for the future.

If demography is destiny, we will indeed inherit the earth.

Trump administration open to $5,000 baby bonus for new mothers: 'Sounds like a good idea'



President Donald Trump said it seemed like good policy to hand out money to new mothers as an incentive to increase U.S. birth rates.

Trump endorsed the idea at the White House on Tuesday when he told the New York Post he liked the idea of a cash incentive to get more Americans to have children.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," the president reportedly said.

The sum of $5,000 would be given to new mothers, with 30% of Fulbright educational grants given to applicants who are married or have children.

Another proposed program, according to the Post, would involve education surrounding menstrual cycles and ovulation so women can better determine the best time for them to conceive.

Pundits have often pointed to Hungary's reward system as a way to increase birthrates; the European country touts tax deductions and credits for each child a family has.

According to a government website, a family's first child allows for a credit equivalent to around $185 USD, while a second child earns a credit of around $370, and a third child credit is worth $610. Tax deductions are also provided per child.

At the same time, mothers with four children or more are exempt from income tax.

'A $5,000 baby bonus is wasteful and won't make a dent, especially among middle to upper class families.'

However, Hungary's birth rates have not seen a huge resurgence despite the country expanding its offers for new families. Hungary offered no-interest loans of around $33,000 to its citizens, which would be forgiven if the family has three children.

As of 2022, Hungary's live births per 1,000 people was just 9.3, according to Macrotrends, falling short of the United States' rate of 11 per 1,000.

U.S. birth rates first dropped drastically in the 1970s before increasing until 1990, when the rate was 16.7 per 1,000 people.

Commentator Maggie Anders, who has spoken extensively on the topic, reacted to the story about $5,000 for new mothers and cited statistics that showed the national average cost of raising a child annually is $23,000. This totaled $414,000 from birth to 18 years old, rendering $5,000 negligible in that journey, she claimed.

"A $5,000 baby bonus is wasteful and won't make a dent, especially among middle to upper class families," she wrote on X. "Obviously, the cost of raising a child depends on a number of factors, but it does not negate the point that housing, daycare, food costs are all very expensive. $5,000 doesn't begin to cover it," the commentator continued. "A 'that'd be nice' isn't good policy. It's wealth redistribution with unclear goals."

Comedian Mark Normand also reacted to the news story on X, and in a since-deleted remark commented, "Elon Musk just became a trillionaire!"

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Austria’s struggle with mass migration holds a lesson for America



The croissant isn’t French — it’s an Austrian culinary rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Since the 13th century, Austrian bakers have been shaping the croissant’s predecessor, the crescent-shaped kipferl, mimicking the Ottoman moon, which, according to popular lore, was used to celebrate the Habsburgs' final standoff against Turkish invaders after the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

Austria’s long-standing defiance against the Turks is as integral to its national identity as Charlemagne’s victory over the Muslim Moors is to France. As Christendom’s last line of defense against Islamic expansion into Europe, Austria held the line. Yet today, Turkish kebab shops fill nearly every street in central Vienna, competing with bakeries that once symbolized the Ottoman Empire’s defeat. The contrast is striking.

Parallel societies will inevitably form without a clear path for immigrants to adopt a national identity.

The Turkish community has become Austria’s largest minority. As of 2023, approximately 500,000 residents of Turkish origin live in the country, a sharp rise from 39,000 in 2001 — a 1,200% increase.

Does this shift reflect modern-day “tolerance” ending nearly 1,000 years of imperial rivalry, or are deeper forces at work?

Tolerance or dire straits?

Popular explanations of Europe’s recent mass migration credit events like the Syrian war in 2015 or the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, which prompted waves of asylum-seekers. However, mass migration in Austria dates back to the aftermath of World War II, when the country lay in rubble with a diminished male population.

To rebuild, Austria sought foreign workers. With the Iron Curtain blocking labor from Eastern Europe, the former Catholic empire turned to its historical rival across the Bosphorus. Austria actively recruited Turkish workers in the following decades, promising employment and economic opportunities.

One local Turkish resident, Metin, remembers, as a child in the 1980s, seeing Austrian embassy billboards in Istanbul promoting jobs and benefits — a golden ticket. Like tens of thousands of others, his family eagerly accepted the offer. However, both Austrians and Turks miscalculated. Austrians assumed the Turks would return home when the job was over. The Turks believed they would be welcomed in their new land. Neither were correct.

“I quickly realized that I wasn’t wanted,” Metin recounted. “My work was wanted, but I wasn’t.”

What started as a temporary workforce has transformed Austria. Turks have established their own parallel society, which continues to grow in influence and numbers. Today, Muslim immigrants, particularly from Turkey, are surpassing Austrians in birth rates while preserving a strong religious and cultural identity from their home country.

Meanwhile, the once-Catholic imperial stronghold is becoming increasingly secular, stepping away from the faith that once defined its national identity. This demographic shift has profound implications — not just for Austria but for all of Europe.

What America can learn

The United States can learn valuable lessons from countries that have dealt with mass migration for generations. Today, 14.9% of the U.S. population is foreign-born, the highest percentage since the immigration surge of 1910.

While left-leaning arguments favor foreign workers to boost the economy, the long-term challenges cannot be ignored. Postwar Austria may have benefited from such policies, but history shows that immigration requires more than economic justification — it demands integration and assimilation.

As Turkish-born Metin warns, welcoming workers means welcoming people. Parallel societies will inevitably form without a clear path for immigrants to adopt a national identity. At best, they may coexist peacefully, leaving the long-term impact dependent on demographics. At worst, clashing cultural norms could threaten national cohesion for generations.

The United States holds a key advantage over Austria in shaping national identity. Unlike European nations, which often tie identity to ethnic heritage, America, for good or ill, does allow for hyphenated identities, such as African-American or Mexican-American. In Austria, one is either Turkish or Austrian — there is no equivalent of a blended national identity. As a result, Turks and Austrians live as separate cultures rather than uniting around shared ideals. Over time, Austria’s future will not be determined by external threats but by shifting demographics within its borders.

America’s strength lies in its ability to forge a national identity independent of ethnicity. In theory, people from all backgrounds can participate in the American experiment, but assimilation does not happen automatically. If we continue to welcome immigrants, we must also provide the framework for integration — otherwise, we risk facing the same challenges Austria now confronts.

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Want to improve the birth rate? Stop being so harsh on mothers.



In their quest to make motherhood great again, conservatives have set a very high bar for those wanting to make a go of it. Enter the all-or-nothing mother.

She must breastfeed baby, and if she’s unable to produce milk for whatever reason, she’s just not trying hard enough. She can’t leave baby in a crib, or sleep-train baby, or leave baby alone with his father or extended family, because Mama must be with baby at all times, lest she give baby a lifetime of attachment-related trauma.

Rather than purity-spiraling and leading the birth rate into further decline, conservatives could simply tell women the truth: that they can relax, because there are a thousand different ways to be a good mother.

She must feed baby exclusively organic food, but she can’t have a job to help her afford it — that might require the ultimate dereliction of maternal duty: day care.

Not that preschool, full-day kindergarten, or half-day kindergarten is much better. Come to think of it, homeschooling is really the only path for any mother who cares about her children. And so on and so forth.

Domestic girlbosses

In theory, such all-or-nothing motherhood applies the tightly wound, busy-busy-busy culture of high-status, white-collar professions to the domestic sphere — where the stakes are the lives and souls of one’s own children, far greater than corporate presentations and spreadsheets ever could be!

And yet, in practice, this vision of motherhood makes it seem intolerable — not to mention impossible — to the only audience that matters: impressionable young women and girls. Far from convincing them of the value of motherhood, making motherhood out to be an all-or-nothing ordeal makes young women wonder if the feminists really were right, if being a mother is incompatible with being a full person.

I say this as a member of that demographic: I’m 23 years old and single, and while I am quite conservative and have always wanted children, I’m surrounded primarily by moderate to liberal, professional-class women my age who don’t know what they want.

Child-hating hags?

My peers, for the most part, aren’t the child-hating, travel-obsessed hags they’re all too often made out to be by conservative media — they happen to actually like children, sometimes in spite of themselves.

While some of their apprehension toward motherhood is absolutely driven by a culture that eggs on adult narcissism and extended adolescence, much of it is driven by the opposite extreme: the expectation that not only will they have to give up their friends, their hobbies, and their careers when they have children, but they will have to become completely dependent on their husbands for their financial and social life and will spend every moment hovering over their children with no self left besides “mother.”

When young women feel like motherhood is all or nothing, that either you stay “child-free” and keep yourself or become a mother and lose yourself, is it any wonder they’re choosing to keep themselves in greater numbers?

More time to spare

While this failure to create tolerable motherhood norms is nonpartisan — it’s telling, for instance, that conservative mothering and hippie mothering have basically become one and the same — conservatives have a special responsibility here.

After all, unlike liberals, conservatives are interested in getting more women to have more children. Instead of tilting at the windmill of middle-class maternal neglect, conservatives should acknowledge the reality that working mothers today spendmoretimewith their children than stay-at-home mothers did a generation ago, and yet children today are more anxious and less self-sufficient than ever before.

Conservatives would do well to keep in mind that women in traditional cultures have the proverbial village to help them raise their children, something American women, even those with traditional values, usually lack.

As a result, while many of the demands conservatives make of mothers ostensibly resemble traditional culture, they deviate from traditional culture in the one way that counts: Rather than enmeshing mothers in the fabric of society, over-intensive conservative mothering norms often alienate mothers from everyone else.

Love's legacy

Why drive mothers crazy — and deter would-be mothers from having children — all for the sake of what is essentially a neurotic, individualistic ideology that doesn’t even seem to improve children’s outcomes — and might actually make them worse?

Rather than purity-spiraling and leading the birth rate into further decline, conservatives could simply tell women the truth: that they can relax, because there are a thousand different ways to be a good mother. And that, when we think of our mothers as adults, we don't remember the lifestyle choices they made — day care or not, organic or not, home birth or not — but rather the love they gave us — the deep, unconditional love that only a mother can give.

US surgeon general issues advisory warning people that parenting is hazardous to our health, recommends MORE government



In late August, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.

It’s a lengthy document, so allow Glenn Beck to translate it for you: “Being a parent is hazardous to your health,” so just “give the government more money, and they'll watch your kids for you.”

Sadly, he’s not kidding. This is indeed an accuration summation of Murthy’s warning.

Unfortunately, this advisory is just further proof that our government is trying to tear the nuclear family down, as it’s the foundation of the society the government seeks to control.

To discuss this issue, Glenn invites one of the brightest talents in the commentating world, Isabel Brown, to discuss this concerning government overreach.

Brown tells Glenn that she finds Murthy’s warning “incredibly concerning.”

“It is just alarming to me the strategic advantage that the media and the machine of the government are using to convince you that marriage and family – the most important bedrock foundation of our society – is somehow bad for you and going to destroy your life,” she says.

Glenn adds that what’s really stressing families out is the reality that it takes “three and a half incomes” to make ends meet these days.

“How about the idea of having a country where one income can actually support a family?” he asks.

“Absolutely correct,” Isabel agrees. “Unfortunately, it seems our elected officials in particular are asking all of the wrong questions about how to fix these ailments in society. Their answer is always the same – more government.”

However, what really needs to happen is the opposite of what Dr. Murthy recommends. We need more marriage and childbearing and less government regulation.

Unfortunately, the government is currently winning the battle. Gen Z is either at or nearing the marriage and childbearing stages, and the statistics aren’t pretty.

“Our marriage rates are currently standing at an all-time low – at the lowest they've ever been since 1867,” says Isabel.

With less interest in creating families, the birth rate has also dropped. In 2023, the U.S. saw its lowest birth rate in history.

Clearly the government’s calculated plan to villainize the nuclear family is working.

But Isabel has hope. And it’s in the very generation many of us have written off as doomed.

“I am incredibly optimistic about Gen. Z,” she tells Glenn, noting that statistically, Zoomers are shockingly “the most culturally and politically conservative generation we've seen since World War II.”

Brown actually wrote a book on this subject. In “The End of the Alphabet: How Gen Z Can Save America,” she explains how Gen Z is poised at the center of the culture shift that will determine the future of our country.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

Ditch the helicopter — children need submarine parents



The birth rate is falling. Population collapse is imminent. The world is graying. We are living through a massive population bottleneck.

It’s so large and so gradual that it’s hard for us to see. We can’t even really feel it … yet.

The submarine parent doesn’t do anything for his kids that his kids can do for themselves. The submarine parent steps back and gives his kids room to breathe.

Large swaths of the population are being culled. Entire socio-cultural blocs are simply being eliminated from the game. The future will not look like the present. There is heavy selection going on. But it doesn’t feel like it because it is all based on choice. Everyone is free to have children or not.

Bare care

And who chooses to have children in an era of population collapse? Who are the ones deciding to inherit the future? While it’s a varied assortment of people from a variety of backgrounds, there is one pitfall that haunts us all.

It’s very simple. If you are consciously deciding to have children during an anti-natalist era, you most likely really want to have children. You probably didn’t end up with a couple of kids by accident. It was a very intentional choice.

For many, it means going against the grain. You care a lot. You probably “care” more than your parents did, most certainly more than your grandparents did before them. Your grandparents probably didn’t critically examine their parenting style daily. That verb, parenting, didn’t even exist in popular consciousness when they were raising kids.

If you are choosing to have kids today, you might be obsessed with your kids. And this obsession is exacerbated by the fact that there are fewer and fewer kids around. That you are in the minority accelerates all of this. It’s more fuel for your fire.

You are laser-focused on raising your kids right, so determined to give them the best opportunity possible. It almost becomes your identity. The temptation is to become so neurotically focused on your kids that you become a helicopter parent on steroids. We all feel it. We all love our kids so much that we can’t help ourselves.

This is the struggle.

Brat factory

By virtue of the fact that you have kids during an era of population collapse, you are predisposed to over-caring and over-parenting. As with so many things in life, a positive contains the seed of a nascent negative, even if it isn’t always obvious on the surface.

Everyone knows that only children have certain issues that children raised with siblings do not. While having lots of one-on-one time has certain benefits, there are also negative impacts.

Crudely put, if you are a kid and you are always the center of attention with the perception that the world revolves around you, you often turn into a brat. This tends to be how snots are made. It’s the truth. Every parent knows it.

How do we very involved parents having children during this strange era avoid this fate for our children? How do we avoid creating a brat factory?

We need to restrain ourselves. We need to step back. We need to realize that our natural inclination is to care too much. We need to realize that that strong desire to have a family becomes a curious weakness at a point.

That sounds provocative, but it’s true. We need to realize that we live in extreme times and that all of us who have kids have some kind of extreme feeling inside us that resulted in us having kids, and we need to temper that.

Submarine parenting

We need to, somehow, raise our two kids as if we have five kids. Or raise our four kids as if we have eight kids. We need to realize that we do not risk doing too little. We risk doing too much. We cannot be helicopter parents. We need to be submarine parents.

Helicopter parents are always hovering over the children making sure everything is right. They are always there making sure they have the best of the best. They want to make sure they have every opportunity. They are always at their children’s beck and call, obsessing over the latest and greatest fears Instagram serves up.

The helicopter parent takes on all the stress of her child in hopes of making her child’s life as easy as possible. Helicopter parents love their children. They just don’t realize how that love hurts their children and themselves. We are already stressed about everything; we are already embarking on the task of maintaining civilization amid population collapse. We can only take so much.

The submarine parent isn’t always visibly there waiting to correct anything that might be troubling the youngster. The submarine parent doesn’t do anything for his kids that his kids can do for themselves. The submarine parent steps back and gives his kids room to breathe.

Dive!

Submarine parents realize that there is effectively no chance that they run the risk of being absentee parents. They realize that they have spent hours researching the best techniques for sleeping, introducing foods, conscious choices about discipline and technology, and every other possible consideration known to mankind.

There is zero chance they aren’t involved. There is zero chance they are checked out. They are the most involved generation of conscious parents ever to have walked God’s green earth. In light of this, they must relax and embrace the submarine.

Submarine parents are always there, of course. But they aren’t hovering. They aren’t making everything easy. They aren’t the entertainment committee. They aren’t always correcting every inconvenience or every minor trouble.

We love our kids so much that we have to realize that our love can be a hindrance. It can manifest in ways that aren’t helpful.

Our natural drive and desire that led us to have children in the first place run the risk of driving us, and our kids, crazy. We have to to temper it and realize who we are. It’s okay. We have to relax a bit. If we don’t want to run a brat factory, we must reject the helicopter and embrace the submarine.

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