As my dedicated readers will no doubt have noticed, I’ve been absent from posting for a few weeks. This is for good reason: at the end of August, my wife and I welcomed a baby boy into the world. It’s hard to overstate how much our lives have changed since then as we get the hang of being new parents. There have been a lot of sleepless nights, probably too much Googling, and lots of stress, but the overriding emotion, the one that inevitably comes to the surface, is joy. Our baby is healthy, and although the amount of time he spends crying may indicate otherwise, he is happy.
A big part of the reason why we can predominately feel joy, rather than anxiety, is that we know we will be able to provide for our baby. Far too many parents in the US are unable to feel that same confidence. An American Psychological Society survey from 2023 found that 66% of parents stress about money, compared with 39% of other adults. Parents were also more than twice as likely as other adults to say that money issues cause tension in their family. The financial strain on new parents shows up in other ways as well: 18% of households with children lack secure access to quality food, compared to 12% of households without children. New research indicates nearly half of parents of young children struggle to afford diapers. One of the things I’ve learned in my three-ish weeks as a dad is the truly insane number of diapers that newborns go through.
Support for families with children in the US is dismally inadequate. The US is the only developed country to not offer any paid time off for parents at the national level. On a positive note, some US states have developed their own policies, but these are generally subpar. Child care is exceedingly expensive in the US, with families spending between 8% and 16% of their income on child care for just one child. Meanwhile, government subsidies for child care are a fraction of the total cost. As of 2023, the US and Türkiye are the only two countries in the OECD not to provide a child allowance, and US spending on families, including tax breaks, is fourth lowest in the OECD. One more cost I want to highlight is health care. The share of family budgets going to health care has increased dramatically since the turn of the 21st century, and millions of children are driven into poverty by health costs (PDF).
What’s worse is that far from improving, things are going in the other direction. The Republican reconciliation bill will cut food stamps for over 3 million families with children. Medicaid cuts included in the bill will also harm families with children. The Trump administration’s policies are making an already bad situation much worse.
It really doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. The inspiration for this post was reading about Finland’s baby box, a care package of baby supplies from that government that all new families are eligible for. Since having my own baby and becoming aware of the cost and logistical burden of purchasing all the necessary baby items, the benefit of something like this really hit home.
There are comprehensive proposals out there for family benefits in the US, which would go a long way toward relieving the economic burdens of parenthood and should be seriously considered. There are a lot of very important problems facing the country right now, but addressing the burden faced by low-income parents needs to be a top priority. Children are, after all, the future of the country. Being a parent is the source of a lot of stressful questions that cannot be addressed by the social safety net—is my kid healthy, will they be happy, should they really be pooping THAT much—but questions of financial security can and should be solved by a stronger social safety net. Every parent should be able to go to bed knowing they will be able to provide financially for their child.
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