By Nicholas Kristof on August 24, 2024.
Nicholas Kristof
Opinion
In their attacks on Democrats and Kamala Harris, Republicans have made a valid point: one of our major political parties has worked to undermine American families.
The problem? While neither party has done enough to support families and children, the party failing worst – not surprisingly – is under the leadership of the thrice-married tycoon who dated a porn star, bragged about grabbing women’s genitals and was convicted by a jury of sexual assault.
You might think that this would make it uncomfortable for the Republican Party to preach family values. But with the same chutzpah that Donald Trump allegedly had when he walked into a dressing room filled with half-naked teenage girls, the GOP claims that it is the Democrats who are betraying family values.
“Rejecting the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and evil thing the left has done in this country,” JD Vance said in 2021. When asked about those remarks last month, he went further in a conversation with Megyn Kelly, saying Democrats have “become anti-family and anti-children.”
This is nonsense. Children in Republican states are more likely to be poor, die young, and drop out of high school than those in Republican states. The states with the highest divorce rates are overwhelmingly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly due to lack of access to reliable contraception).
One of President Joe Biden’s biggest accomplishments was cutting child poverty by nearly half, thanks largely to the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans ended the program, driving child poverty up again.
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Could anything be more anti-child?
Well, maybe it’s our gun policies. Guns are the leading cause of death among American children and teenagers, largely due to Republicans’ unwillingness to compromise and their refusal to pass meaningful gun safety legislation.
Republicans are the reason the United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not have guaranteed paid maternity leave. Republicans fought against universal health insurance and opposed the expansion of Medicaid. This is one of the reasons why a child is three times more likely to die by the age of five in the United States than in, say, Slovenia or Estonia.
Think of it this way: If we had the same infant mortality rate as Norway or Finland, we would save the life of one child between the ages of one and five every three hours in the United States.
Project 2025, a blueprint for a Trump administration that Trump is desperately distancing himself from, would only make things worse. It would end Head Start, a lifeline for low-income children, and dismantle the Department of Education.
“My administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” Trump posted on Friday. But even putting aside abortion rights, Republican extremism has led to obstacles to IVF, especially after an Alabama court ruled that a frozen embryo should be considered a child. The Southern Baptist Convention, a stronghold of Trump support, criticized IVF this summer.
Vance has sponsored a watered-down bill that he says would protect IVF, yet Republican senators have blocked stronger legislation to defend IVF fertility treatments and expand access, leaving many of the 1 in 7 women who have trouble getting pregnant or maintaining a pregnancy behind.
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Could anything be more anti-family?
Look, I’ve argued repeatedly that growing up in a two-parent household is the one privilege liberals ignore, that the left has unfairly demonized Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his emphasis on family structure, and that Democrats can do more to eliminate the marriage penalty and improve opportunities for children.
I am concerned about the breakdown of marriage in working-class America—more than 70% of Americans without a high school diploma are unmarried. If we care about child poverty, we must face the reality that households headed by single mothers are five times more likely to live in poverty than households headed by married couples. So the concern about family and children is valid, and Democrats should try harder.
But the fact that Republicans are blaming the Democrats is absurd, because the Republican Party has apparently made every effort to harm families and children.
For example, union membership leads to higher marriage rates among men, apparently because they then earn more money and become more stable and attractive as partners. But Republicans have been working to undermine unions for decades.
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One way to increase marriage rates might be to help teens avoid pregnancy, so they might be more likely to marry in their 20s. But Republicans have often been leery of comprehensive sex education and have tried to cut funding for Title X family planning programs. And it’s no coincidence that the states with the highest birth rates to teen mothers are all Republican states.
Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson oppose no-fault divorce laws that make it easy for couples to divorce, claiming it is a pro-family stance. (Trump seems understandably more open to divorce.) But there is overwhelming evidence that before easy divorce, many women were trapped in violent marriages that terrorized them and their children.
A careful study by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found that the introduction of amicable divorce in America was accompanied by a decline in female suicides of about 20%, in wife beaters of at least 25%, and an apparent decline in the murder of women by husbands.
Is it really family-friendly to increase the number of mothers beaten and murdered?
I’m glad Republicans are complaining about the challenges facing families and children. But when Trump, Vance and other Republicans seek to shift blame onto those who bear the primary responsibility for the plight of America’s families and children, they should look in the mirror and hang their heads in shame.
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Contact Nicholas Kristof at Facebook.com/Kristof, Twitter.com/NickKristof, or by mail at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.)
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
By Nicholas Kristof/Jamie Lee Taete
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