How To Build A Baby Boom

President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” signed into law earlier this month includes a $1,000 Trump Account for every newborn; a bold move aimed at encouraging Americans to have more children. It’s a powerful gesture from the President of the United States to invest in babies and families. But if our leaders are serious about reversing America’s declining birth rate, they’ll need to go beyond one-time bonuses. Because while financial incentives might nudge some families toward “yes,” the real key to a lasting baby boom is cultural: We need to make life easier for moms. That means asking a bigger question: How do we make America more family-friendly, especially for mothers? Stop Glamorizing the Struggle and Start Highlighting the Joy In a troubling social media trend, actress Molly Sims and other moms have filmed themselves joking about ending their lives in response to the question, “So what’s it like being home with your kids all summer?” It’s not just dark humor, it’s a viral wave of anti-motherhood messaging that paints parenting as unbearable and joyless. On the wildly popular Call Her Daddy podcast, singer Chappell Roan echoed the sentiment, saying, “All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I don’t know anyone, I actually don’t know anyone, who’s happy and has children at this age.” It’s no wonder a friend of mine, recently postpartum, confessed that motherhood has felt easier than she expected, because the bar had been set so low by the horror stories flooding her feed. Here’s the truth: When a woman becomes a mother, her life isn’t over. It’s a new beginning. Yes, it’s demanding, but it’s also rich with meaning, joy, and love. Motherhood adds to a woman’s life; it doesn’t subtract from it. And maybe, just maybe, if we stopped treating motherhood like a cautionary tale on social media and in popular TV shows and movies, more women would feel confident embracing it for themselves. Encourage Moms to Bring Their Babies Along More Over the years, I have taken my kids to a lot of different doctor appointments, but never a dermatology one. This spring, I moved my annual dermatology appointment three times due to scheduling conflicts with my kids. I finally decided to just bring my baby and spent the hour singing to and cuddling my youngest. Was it a little less comfortable? Yes, but my doctor was happy to make it work. We need a society that encourages moms to bring their babies and kids along more. For the youngest ones, that means more quiet places to nurse and more social acceptance of nursing wherever and whenever the baby needs milk. Isolating moms and babies is not good for anyone. When my first child was a baby, I was invited to speak at Princeton University for two events. At the second event in the evening, I spoke to the Network of enlightened Women chapter on campus with my son in a baby carrier on my chest. It was great for him to be close to me, and I felt like I gave a good speech. Would I bring an on-the-move 18-month-old to the same event? No. But the point is, we need more cultural encouragement for moms to consider bringing their kids along, rather than automatically declining invitations or leaving their children at home. Other countries do this far better. In many parts of Europe, babies are simply woven into the fabric of everyday life. You’ll see moms nursing in public without shame, strollers tucked into the corners of cafés, toddlers at grocery stores and museums. Japan takes this even further, designing public spaces with family-friendliness in mind: nursing rooms in train stations and malls, diaper-changing stations in both men’s and women’s restrooms, and priority seating for parents with children on public transit. It’s not just tolerated, it’s expected that moms will be out and about with their little ones. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the cultural messaging is often the opposite: leave your child at home, or stay home with them. Don’t bring your crying baby on the plane, or risk being the subject of a viral TikTok rant. Don’t breastfeed at the park, or someone might glare, or worse, record and shame you. Don’t bring your toddler to a restaurant unless you’re prepared for eye-rolls and unsolicited parenting advice from nearby diners. Some influencers even go so far as to call for “child-free restaurants” or airplane seating sections that ban babies altogether, as if a parent’s right to exist in public with their child is up for debate. It’s no wonder so many American moms feel isolated and unseen. And it’s no surprise that fewer women feel excited or confident about entering motherhood when the culture around them is so inhospitable to mothers simply going about their day. If we want more babies, we need to start by making public life more welcoming to the babies (and moms) we already have. Make It Easier For Moms To Find Part-time Work Flexible, part-time work shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for the few; it should be a cultural norm that helps working moms stay in the game without burning out. But outdated policies and professional gatekeeping make that harder than it should be. Take the legal field, for example. Some states still require lawyers to have practiced full-time in order to qualify for admission without examination. That means a mom who scaled back her hours to care for her kids, while still staying sharp and practicing law, can be penalized and forced to jump through additional hoops if she moves states. And this isn’t just a niche legal issue. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , in 2021, 71.2% of mothers with children under 18 were in the labor force. Meanwhile, survey data from the Pew Research Center shows that nearly half of mothers (47%) say their ideal job would be part-time, but they’re held back by factors such as costs and lack of benefits. If we want more women to say yes to motherhood, and yes to staying in the workforce, we need to build a labor market that reflects the realities of caregiving. That means rethinking the policies, licensing rules, and workplace cultures that penalize moms for stepping back temporarily. Working less for a season shouldn’t mean starting over entirely. We need to stop treating motherhood like a career setback and start treating it like a season worth supporting. Make Appliances Work Again Modern appliances are supposed to make life easier, but for many moms, they’ve become yet another source of daily frustration, all in the name of “efficiency.” My energy-efficient dishwasher? It requires a full pre-rinse and can’t be loaded to capacity without sacrificing clean dishes. So instead of saving water and electricity, I’m running it more often just to get the job done. The same goes for my dryer. There’s no effective quick-dry option, which means last-minute school clothes or emergency laundry loads turn into multi-cycle ordeals. When every minute counts in a busy household, these slow, underperforming appliances feel more like a burden than a convenience. Efficiency standards may sound good on paper, but they’re failing the real-world stress test of family life. That’s why in May, the Senate passed a resolution to roll back restrictive energy-efficiency mandates on household appliances; rules that too often put ideology ahead of functionality. President Trump signed it, a win for families who just want their dishwashers to wash dishes and their dryers to dry clothes. If we want to support moms, we can start by designing home tools that actually work. Real efficiency means making life smoother, not adding another chore to the to-do list. Lower The Cost Of Each Additional Child Every additional child comes with added expenses, but some of those costs aren’t just about diapers and daycare. They're baked into regulations that make larger families logistically difficult. When I had my first child, I carefully researched car seats. What I didn’t realize was how hard it would be to fit three across the back row of a standard car. By the time my third came along, I already had a minivan but many people have to upgrade just to comply with car seat laws. That’s not just a parenting choice, it’s a financial barrier. Research backs this up: a widely cited National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that when a woman has two children requiring car seats, she is significantly less likely to have a third. Not because she doesn’t want one, but because it simply doesn’t fit, literally or financially. If America is serious about reversing its record-low fertility rate, lawmakers must examine how well-intentioned safety regulations, like car seat mandates, may be discouraging the very thing our leaders claim to want: more babies. A solution? Encourage car seat manufacturers to innovate slimmer, space-saving designs that meet safety standards without requiring a vehicle upgrade. Or, consider policy exceptions or flexible seating configurations that safely accommodate families with multiple children, especially in vehicles with top safety ratings. Because safety matters, but so does affordability. Supporting larger families shouldn’t come down to who can afford a minivan. Elon Musk, who led the Department of Government Efficiency and has fathered more than a dozen children, posted to X back in 2022 that, “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” Vice President JD Vance said in January at the March for Life, “So let me say very simply: I want more babies in the United States of America. I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.” If America’s leaders truly want more babies, they can’t stop at slogans and signing bonuses. They need to champion a cultural shift; one that doesn’t just tolerate motherhood, but reveres it. That means celebrating moms instead of sidelining them, making everyday life more navigable for families, and rethinking policies that quietly punish those who choose to grow their families. A nation that wants to thrive tomorrow must make it easier, and more desirable, to raise children today.