The White House’s Latest Dumb Idea: A Trad Wife Bonus

A new plan backed by JD Vance would pit working mothers against stay-at-home moms. It’s a cruel idea—and the Democrats need to counter it with something better.

When Republicans are faced with an affordability problem, they eagerly try to turn it into a culture war issue, every time. The latest example is a draft plan from the White House to raid a federal program that subsidizes care for low-income families in order to provide subsidies to married couples in which one parent stays home. The proposal, which is backed by Vice President JD Vance and appeared in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint that has guided some of President Trump’s worst ideas, is a clear attempt by the administration to use federal money to impose traditional family roles on the working class.

Opening these subsidies up to married couples—and doing so without dramatically expanding funding for childcare for working parents—is reactionary trad wife nonsense. (Not that any low-income woman could live the Instagram trad wife dream with the additional infusion of only $9K a year, the typical amount that parents receive from this Clinton-era program.) Yet families do need help. Democrats need to emphasize that families’ affordability struggles can’t be addressed by pitting different groups against each other—and that they have a better plan, one which will help all parents in need.

There is nothing wrong with stay-at-home moms receiving government help, but that help shouldn’t come at the expense of working parents, as even some conservative policy experts have pointed out. Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The New York Times that while he is “a big proponent of more support for stay-at-home parents,” he opposes this plan because it doesn’t increase funding, which “would mean more parents competing........

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