Carrying the Banner
This week, members of Congress introduced a slew of new bills aimed at helping families
All the news that’s fit to print, and even some that isn’t — If it’s Friday, it’s Family Matters:
Would You Look at that Headline?: A veritable slew of notable new bills
California Dreamin’: Gov. Newsom announced a free diaper program. Conservatives pounced.
Now Hiring: Niskanen Center child care policy role; “Get Married” research associate at IFS
It’s Me, Hi: Washington Examiner, Washington Examiner again, The 19th
Parting Shots
Would You Look at that Headline?
To paraphrase Vladimir Lenin, there are some weeks in which nothing worth mentioning on the family policy front happens, and there are some weeks in which too much happens on the family policy front to fit in a weekly newsletter. And this is one of those weeks! We now go to Capitol Hill for a live look at some new, worthwhile pieces of legislation:
Supporting Newborn Parents Act of 2026
As Family Matters regulars will remember, I have long written in favor of upfront support for parents around the time of birth (Institute for Family Studies; American Compass, covered in PolicySphere; IFS again; here; National Review; a Capitol Hill one-pager with polling data; and many other places). And now, for the first time, a bipartisan bill proposes to bring that idea to fruition.
The Supporting Newborn Parents Act of 2026 is led by Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) and co-sponsored by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), Blake Moore (R-Utah), and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich), and would establish a standalone tax credit, separate from the existing Child Tax Credit (CTC), of up to $2,000 for families welcoming a newborn child (Bill summary; full text).
Crucially, this would be available within the weeks after childbirth, though parents who chose could opt to take it off their next year’s income taxes instead. Low-income parents would receive a portion of the credit, with the amount phasing-in with income, though they could choose to use either their current or prior year’s income to ensure more families have access to this financial support around childbirth. It would be a straightforward, highly salient, meaningful way of recognizing the income volatility around childbirth and celebrating the joy of new life in a substantive way.1 It’s not especially pricey, either; the Tax Policy Center estimates a $70.7 billion budget score over ten years.
As a wise man said in support of the bill’s introduction:
“In an era of declining family formation, we need action to support new parents during a vulnerable and volatile time of their life. This bill would support parents of newborns in a direct, visible way, helping make America a meaningfully more welcoming place to have a child. If it passes, it would become the most high-impact piece of pro-family legislation in a generation.”
Let’s do it and be legends.
Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act
There are few advocates who have done more to push back against a “safety-ist” approach to childhood than Lenore Skenazy, founder of the “Let’s Grow” movement, and it’s not a surprise to see her endorsement prominently touted (“Excess overprotection has been disastrous for kids’ mental health”) on Rep. Blake Moore’s new bill, the “Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act” (one-pager; bill text). The motivation behind the bill is the spate of stories criminalizing parents who choose to give their children an above-average amount of freedom — walking to a park, hanging out at a McDonald’s, playing unattended after school — and find themselves with a visit from Child Protective Services, often summoned by a well-meaning but overbearing busybody neighbor.
The bill itself is largely a messaging exercise, meant to draw attention to the problem, because most of the child welfare and CPS apparatus lays largely outside the reach of the federal government. It spends as much time laying out the problem as prescribing anything that would directly get at it — a report on independent childhood from HHS, a requirement that states train child welfare workers to “prevent unnecessary and traumatic investigations,” and other efforts to increase awareness that when it comes to child safety, it is, in fact, possible to go too far.
My sense — borrowing from Matthew Yglesias’ post earlier in the week — is that while overzealous CPS visits are indeed a real problem, the door preventing more independent childhoods is largely locked from the inside. It’s physically safer to turn on a Playstation after school than bike around the neighborhood looking for demogorgons. It’s easier to be bored on an aimless afternoon without electronic stimulants than with them. It’s less risky, as a parent, to default to performative overparenting than risk the wrath of a neighbor one phone call away from 9-1-1. But to the degree that officers of the state are acting to buttress that tendency, as Liz Wolfe continues to point out, they should cut that out.
The bill is bipartisan (co-sponsored by Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and would be a meaningful, welcome signal that the helicopter parent era is rightfully fading into the distance and Americans are willing to give each other a little more tolerance when it comes to parenting decisions again. Worth taking up! Worth talking about!
Screen-time Management And Recommendations for Teens (SMART) and Kids Act
Elsewhere on the protecting childhood front, Congressman Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.) and Congresswoman Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) introduced a bill that would sidestep some of the larger fights around “duty of care” and age verification that are swirling elsewhere in Congress to direct the Surgeon General to develop recommendations around screen time limits for kids of different ages, including whether certain types of screen time may be more or less harmful to children.
We will, of course, ultimately need legislative action to rein in some of Big Tech’s more egregious behavior. But remember that what helped begin the change in the the landscape around smoking in the U.S. was not a big lawsuit or legislative action but a Surgeon General’s report that made clear what many people had increasingly starting to suspect — namely, that cigarettes were bad for you. Parents who right now default to iPads as babysitters in restaurants, and have not read Clare Morell’s “The Tech Exit,” could benefit from straightforward recommendations. Clear guidance from the Surgeon General giving parents actionable guidelines around phones and tech for kids could help amplify the growing anti-screen movement (Toy Story 5, out later this summer, may help too), and the SMART Kids Act would facilitate that within a year of its potential passage. (Bill text)
Let Kids Play Act
We have a second Congressman Chris Deluzio sighting! This time teaming with Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) around a bill that would seek to defuse some of the growing arms race around youth sports (they are joined by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), and Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.); One-pager, bill text).
Sometimes, the anti-private equity voices can get a little bit carried away — PE firms are very good at finding inefficiencies and boosting returns, and that can be a useful function in many parts of the economy. But there are other parts of the economy where we are not striving for efficiencies and higher profit margins — nursing homes might be one, youth sports leagues another. Private equity firms are increasingly charging families $20 and up per ticket to watch their child play, crowding out recreational and lower-intensity leagues with pay-to-play travel ball, preventing parents from taking pictures and videos of their own kids’ games while requiring them to purchase professional photos, engaging in kickback travel arrangements that require families to stay in a certain hotel for above-market rates, and, in numerous other ways, enhancing shareholder returns at the expense of American childhood.
Getting private equity out of youth sports, as this bill would do, won’t automatically end some of those practices. But removing the drive to see youth sports as a resource to be mined, rather than an opportunity to be provided, could lead leagues to refocus on more affordable, less intensive offerings. Either that or some might fold up shop — not necessarily an undesirable outcome.
It’s possible for anti-monopolists to, at times, overgild the lily. But there’s no good reason — and a lot of bad ones — to let the forces of capitalism turn the institution of youth sports into just another profit center. The reason for conservatives to sign onto this bill isn’t to stick to aspiring corporate titans, or even to embrace a “affordability” angle to youth sports (we need to lower stakes around juvenile athletics, not make it easier for more parents to afford the higher ones.) But even if this wouldn’t solve every problem, there’s no compelling reason to let investors hijack Little League. The Let Kids Play Act would be an initial salvo aimed at making kids sports fun again — worth bipartisan sponsorship, and soon.
Other Bills of Note
Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) introduced a suite of maternal mortality bills, including one that would establish a pilot program exploring alternate payment methods for perinatal care — some ideas worth exploring…Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) introduced his Barring American Citizenship by Keeping Out Foreign Fraudsters (BACK OFF) Act on the Senate floor, which would crack down on the burgeoning business of “birth tourism” here in the U.S. by, among other things, authorizing immigration officials to deny or delay issuance of a visa if someone is suspected to be traveling to the U.S. for the purposes of birth tourism… Senator Andy Kim (D-N.J.) joined Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.) on legislation that would require a federal survey to ask about multigenerational caregiving, something that we don’t have great data on currently…100 Congressional Democrats introduced the Universal School Meals Act, and Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), and Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) introduced the Feed Our Kids Act, which would make breakfast, lunch, and afterschool snacks free for every K-12 public school student in the U.S. This stuff polls insanely well but the cost could easily push past $70 billion per year….Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) introduced a bill that would change the Safe Routes to School program so that projects to make school bus stops safer would be eligible for federal funding. Almost half of public school students take the school bus and giving parents more peace of mind that their kid can get to school and back safely is a worthwhile goal (and not unrelated to the Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act!)
California Dreamin’
File this one in the category of “no good deed goes unpunished.” After last week’s Family Matters went to press, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that his state would be contracting with a nonprofit to ensure that every new mom in the Golden State receives 400 free diapers upon leaving the hospital after giving birth, enough to cover the new baby’s first two months or so.
Almost immediately, the internet pounced, fed by some bad math and assumptions about how the program would operate. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said it was evidence the “cradle-to-grave entitlement state really will now start in the cradle.” Lyman Stone accused Gov. Newsom of “using babies as a cover for corruption,” suggesting the state was overpaying per diaper by at least a factor of two.2
Those criticisms were not well-founded — the actual budget for the program, including start-up costs, is well within the normal operating range. By the time the pilot program rolls out to serve all California moms, the state anticipates spending $12.5 million to provide 80 million free diapers (a projected 15 cents per diaper, for those playing along at home, nowhere near the inflated costs that had been tossed about.)
Is this program alone going to reverse California’s slumping fertility rates, or mitigate the need for cash assistance for new parents à la the bill proposed by Rep. Valadao? Of course not. But is it a tangible, up-front gesture that will make life a little easier for new moms? Yes. And it’s worth doing.
The whole thing illustrates the dangers of allowing partisan or sectarian lenses to cloud one’s judgment. Perhaps California’s diaper program will turn out to be a boondoggle — it certainly wouldn’t be the first California initiative to do so.3 But even if the program design could theoretically stand to be improved, it hardly deserves the scorn being directed at it. For so many conservatives to immediately jump to finding fault with Gov. Newsom felt a little opportunistic. Sometimes a program can be good without being perfect; and sometimes we should do a better job resisting the temptation to hold our political opponents’ ideas to a higher standard than our own side’s.
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Now Hiring
The Niskanen Center is hiring a policy analyst to help with their work on child care pluralism and parental support as part of their work on reforming and expanding traditional cash support for workers and families.
They’re looking for someone with expertise in pre-natal-to-five policies and a willingness to delve deeply into relevant issues (federal block grant financing, rules and regulations, program integrity), and — fair warning — you’d probably get stuck in a non-zero number of Zoom meetings with me and others in the conservative pro-family arena. If that sounds interesting, apply today!
And the Institute for Family Studies is looking for a research associate for its “Get Married” initiative, based on the book of the same name by IFS’ Brad Wilcox. If you don’t know whether or not you want to encourage people to get married, this is not the position for you, but if you do — and if you have a background doing statistical work, some writing ability, and an interest in state and federal marriage policy, this could be the job for you! Apply here.
It’s Me, Hi
It’s always nice to have the chance to level-set a conversation around the future of the right, and I was happy to offer some brief thoughts for the Washington Examiner in their ongoing series “The Right Way Forward”:
“There are no silver bullets to help us here. Building a pro-family economic agenda starts with recognizing the burdens parents bear and then beginning the slow, deliberate work of putting political muscle behind that vision. For a conservative movement looking for a post-populist economic vision to rally around, one that centers families’ needs could provide a compelling start.” (full text available here)
I again graced the pages of the Washington Examiner, speaking about the Trump administration’s rollout of fertility insurance regulation in Mabinty Quarshie and Gabrielle M. Etzel’s story:
“A lot of pro-lifers have significant moral concerns with IVF…This sort of split-the-baby, pun intended, approach to try to expand access for IVF, like they talked about on the campaign trail, while also acknowledging the moral and ethical concerns that a lot of pro-lifers have…They were very careful to write this in a way that allows for coverage of not just IVF, but all these other things that there's been growing attention paid to.”
And I spoke to The 19th for Shefali Luthra and Barbara Rodriguez’s piece on the firing/resignation of former FDA commissioner Marty Makary:
“Social and religious conservatives have been really disappointed with how the FDA has slow-walked responding to their concerns, especially with regards to mifepristone, and it’s possible a new head could be more responsive…But it’s also possible that whoever he or she might be, they’d be stuck facing the same political realities — serving in an administration that has so far been very reluctant to stake much political capital on the concerns that animate pro-lifers.”
Parting Shots
Nobody does a crisp, clean micro-site like Matt Bruenig and his People’s Policy Project have come up with a comparative approach to child care policy in the U.S. vs. the Nordics (take with grain of salt)
The Trump administration is exploring how to correct the over-expansion of eligibility under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (women seeking to become pregnant via IVF are, by definition, not yet “pregnant workers,”) and Senate Democrats are upset, reports Julianne McShane (MS NOW)
Claire Cain Miller reports on the corporations that are trimming paid leave and dropping IVF and surrogacy benefits to help rein in fringe benefit costs (New York Times)
Josh McCabe praises Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee’s proposal to replace the state’s existing dependent exemption with a fully refundable child tax credit of $325 per child. (Boston Globe)
Evie Solheim offers a respectful yet critical review of Freya India’s new book, GIRLS® — “the arguments in GIRLS® fall flat not because India’s thesis is wrong but because she overstates the problem.” (The American Conservative)
Helen Lewis offers an eminently readable and, at times, extremely funny profile of some of the voices and personalities behind the “masculinist” strain on the right (The Atlantic)
Molly Sheahan of the California Catholic Conference writes that the first thing to tell a mom facing an unexpected pregnancy is “Congratulations!” (OSV News)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed legislation cracking down on surrogacy contracts signed with residents of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Syria. (Florida Politics)
A lovely piece, written with a deft touch, by Leah Libresco Sargeant on why a brute-force binary approach to family planning decisions fails to capture the complexity of whether or not to think about adding a child (The Dispatch)
Incredible discovery from Tobias Peter and the AEI team about the limitations of a big Urban Institute paper on housing supply, showing that relying on machine learning led to totally unreliable findings, summarized by Ned Resnikoff (Public Comments)
Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney writes against the Trump administration’s embrace of prediction markets — “offering “event contracts” on the outcome of a football game or on how many points LeBron James will score is not financial innovation. It is sports betting.” (Commonplace)
If you’re at all interested in the dating habits of young Gen Z Catholics (and who isn’t), you’ll want to make time for a reported piece from Jack Figge, a master’s student at Benedictine College, on how young adults are treating dating both too seriously and not seriously enough (The Pillar)
Joanna Kenty reports on a new initiative in Arkansas, where younger lawmakers are teaming up across the aisle to improve maternal health and newborn outcomes (The Renovator)
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I remain steadfast in my belief that a newborn tax credit should also scale with the number of married parents in the household, because dads deserve the flexibility to be able to be physically present in those early days as well. But that quibble aside, the bill is drawn up very neatly.
In the time between the writing and publishing of this item, this thread appears to have been deleted.
Maybe they can make the free diapers available between Bakersfield and Merced.