The future of America depends on flourishing families 

These family dynamics also affect the lives of children. Today, 40% of American children are born to unmarried parents, and roughly 25% live with a single parent, the highest rate in the world.  

Our current trajectory translates to a future America with far fewer Americans. 

The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage — the union of one man and one woman — is its cornerstone. It is the seedbed of self-government. A strong family is itself a declaration of independence from an ever-expanding state and minimizes the need for government in its daily life. The opposite is also true: Family decline fuels the growth of government. 

This is why the Heritage Foundation published Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years, a comprehensive policy paper intended to serve as a road map for rebuilding our most important institution. Our report analyzes the policy and cultural factors that destabilized family life and provides recommendations to reverse decades of decline. 

It is no surprise that the liberal New York Times and NPR framed our efforts to strengthen families as an attack on women’s and LGBT rights. But while there is broad agreement on work requirements in welfare programs and eliminating marriage penalties, there are also legitimate disagreements on the Right about what, if any, role the government should play in encouraging family formation. 

Given the damage done to the family by policies that expanded the welfare state in the 1960s, a healthy dose of skepticism should be expected for anything that resembles social engineering coming from Washington. Principled critiques of the costs and benefits of expanded child tax credits deserve serious consideration. Humility is too often a virtue in short supply within the halls of power in our nation’s capital.

But Heritage policy experts recognize that when low-income couples say “yes” to children but “maybe” to marriage, they increase the likelihood that both mother and child end up on public aid. This is one of the many reasons our policy solutions, tax credits or otherwise, are keyed to marriage. 

Another related area of disagreement on the Right is related to messaging about the solutions to our family-formation crisis. The total fertility rate, approximately 1.6 births per woman, is below the 2.1 replacement rate, so it’s easy to understand why elected officials, political advisers, tech leaders, and social activists want more babies born. 

But treating babies like an outcome measure opens the door to policy ideas that will not lead to flourishing families, including ubiquitous (and subsidized) in vitro fertilization access, commercial surrogacy, and other problematic forms of reproductive technology. Pro-life groups have already begun pointing out the ethical concerns of destroying unused embryos. An expansion in IVF access and use would likely only encourage more women to delay marriage and children, and do little to reverse demographic decline. That has certainly been the case in Spain. Europe’s leader in IVF also has the highest average age at first marriage for men and the second-highest for women.

These interventions are sold as cures for America’s birth dearth, but sustainable efforts to strengthen families must be built on a pro-marriage, not merely a pro-natal, vision for the future. Proposals to strengthen the family that are tied to marriage, especially in early adulthood, align policy intent and incentives for maximum societal impact. 

One example is our proposed Newlywed Early Starters Trust accounts, which would deposit $2,500 into an investment account when a child is born and could be accessed by couples who marry by or before the age of 30. To give a sense of how the free market and compound interest can support family formation, a couple who marries at 28 could expect an inflation-adjusted NEST distribution of more than $38,000 over three years. That is the type of financial security that would go a long way to help newlyweds, especially in working-class and low-income communities where the married, two-parent families are a relic of the past. 

NEST is a template for future family policy proposals because it addresses bipartisan concerns about affordability while encouraging both the optimal family formation sequence — marriage before baby carriage — and timing. 

Heritage is in the middle of an ideological fight for the family. The progressive Left has abandoned the battlefield and would love nothing more than to paint family policy as a regressive right-wing obsession. Some conservatives are pro-family but reject the idea that government can be a force for good in this area of life. Others are vocal about their desire to see a “baby boom” but aren’t as concerned about ensuring every child has a right to the connection, affection, and protection of their biological parents. 

The conservative movement, now more than ever, needs clear thinking and bold action on matters of hearth and home because the future of the family will determine the fate of the nation. 

Delano Squires is the director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at The Heritage Foundation.