President Donald Trump’s administration wants more American babies born to American mothers, but as the Boston Globe reports, high living costs are damping that baby fever.
“I would love to have a small baseball team of children,” said Tierney Elison, a Winthrop, Mass., mom of two and a midwife who feels she wouldn’t be able to afford the third child. “I love being pregnant. I love giving birth. I love the newborn stage. I love watching the kids grow. But it is such a slog trying to make all of this work.”
“No amount of baby fever can overcome economic anxiety right now,” she added.
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Pronatalists like Vice President J. D. Vance and DOGE chief Elon Musk are pressing Trump to consider policies encouraging childbirth, but The Globe interviewed more than 20 women who feel they’ve been priced out of parenthood despite Trump considering considering incentivizing higher fertility rates with a $5,000 “baby bonus”.
One of the big problems is the nation’s cost of childcare. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 36 percent of women ages 18-49 said they were unlikely to have children because of their inability to afford it.
Boston resident Tania Del Rio reports childcare for their two kids costing between $1,200 and $2,000 a month, despite the family deliberately spacing out their kids’ births to avoid a day care cost overlap.
“What you hear in conversations is, ‘OK, when you have kids, save up for college,’” Del Rio said. “No one ever tells you, really, that you should save up for child care.”
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The Lending Tree’s annual costs associated with raising a small child recently jumped to $297,674, over 18 years. Even conservative think tank The Institute for Family Studies posted an opinion claiming the cost of raising a kid to adulthood “spans anywhere from $202,248 to $430,928.”
Read the full Boston Globe article here.
