The conservative blueprint ties declining birthrates to women’s independence, and proposes policies to steer them back toward early marriage and motherhood.
In honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the right-wing Heritage Foundation—developers of Project 2025, the policy guidebook written to influence the Trump administration’s legislative priorities—has issued a 168-page position paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” The document, released in January, is intended to “restore the family,” by elevating a male-led, heterosexual model of social relations.
“The only way for America to thrive in future generations is to rebuild the family, and that can happen only with a societal commitment to revive the institution of marriage,” the report states.
And lest their meaning be a tad vague, the “Saving America” report makes clear the organization is referring to what it calls “the natural family”: one man and one woman, united in holy matrimony, followed by a slew of biological children.
Throughout the report, the idea that the past 60-plus years have allowed “the sex act to be separated from marriage and childbearing” is lambasted.
Likewise, the paper slams the War on Poverty that was launched by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964. That effort led to the development of food stamps (now called SNAP), as well as Medicare, Medicaid and other essential safety-net programs. Heritage calls Johnson’s anti-poverty initiative a “war on wedlock,” and charges that it allowed “government welfare to displace men from their role as providers.”
But despite its focus on the hated welfare state and alternative family structures, “Saving America”’s underlying bugaboo is panic over the low domestic birth rate and the fact that people in the U.S. are having fewer and fewer babies.
And who is to blame for this dastardly development? You guessed it: a pervasive female focus on “career and financial independence over family and marriage.” Indeed, instead of a shared marital life of “duty and virtue,” the report concludes that uppity women have sought “personal fulfillment.” Moreover, rather than saying ‘yes’ to a man they do not love, many have opted for an “emotional connection to the person,” or even a soulmate.
The Heritage Foundation finds this appalling and thinks it knows how to squash these trends. In addition to slashing public benefits, the authors of the report advocate ending no-fault divorce and limiting college enrollment. According to Heritage, ending easy access to PLUS loans and reducing financial aid awards will derail “over credentialing” and “pointless debt” and encourage women to procreate early and often.
The report is both absurd and terrifying—which is why the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) is sounding an alarm about it. Emily Martin, the NWLC’s chief program officer and Amy Matsui, its vice president of childcare and income security, spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader about “Saving America by Saving the Family” in late February.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Eleanor J. Bader: Much of the report recycles arguments that the right-wing has been voicing for 40 years. What’s different about “Saving America”?
Amy Matsui: There are a lot of notes in this song that sound familiar.
During 2004, the Bush administration supported the Healthy Marriage Initiative which promoted marriage as a solution to poverty. Like that effort, Heritage’s current policy paper scapegoats women who prioritize personal satisfaction, some of whom have turned away from traditional family structures. It harkens back to the past and tries to enshrine a particular kind of marriage, with fixed gender roles within a conservative type of Christianity.
We’re also now seeing an emphasis on having multiple children as a theme in many pronatalist conversations. The fear is that people are not having enough children to replace older workers when they retire or die. Of course, there are ways to address this without putting constraints on women’s opportunities or locking people into family structures where they could face real harms. But policies to help families balance work and family, such as giving workers more caregiving support, do not fit into the Heritage Foundation’s plans.
Emily Martin: The Heritage Foundation’s rhetoric centers on the importance of heterosexual marriage and ending out-of-wedlock births and reflects a racialized hostility to women of color, and especially Black women.
The right took this up in the 1980s and the arguments have continued to today, but what is new in the report is the tension in the narrative they’re putting forward. On one hand, there’s a call to increase the U.S. birthrate as a matter of government policy. At the same time, the report reflects an anxiety about birth rates outside of heterosexual marriage.
In the 1980s and 90s, the right wanted to discourage poor women, especially low-income women of color, from having out-of-wedlock babies and there was a lot of attention to curbing teen pregnancy. Now the push, at least on the surface, is to get women to marry at a young age and have as many babies as possible. Some babies are encouraged; others are not. Still, when the mask slips, they are direct and explicit about their belief that too many women are pursuing higher education and they want to scale back college attendance. They see this as a way to promote more people having more children. There seems to be a new openness about expressing contempt for women being too smart and too independent.
Matsui: Another thing is that the context has changed. This paper was released at a time when people like white nationalist Nick Fuentes are talking about putting women in gulags. People are now saying the quiet parts aloud. The report doesn’t use Fuentes’ language, but ‘Saving America’ lands differently because of the socio-political conversations people are having.
We are in a moment of overt hostility toward women, and most people recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to control and restrict women’s lives.
Amy Matsui
Bader: The report also ignores the reasons people are having fewer children and relies on an outdated idea that one wage-earner can support a household.
Matsui: The report presents a scenario that does not comport with reality. People simply can’t afford to have a lot of children. They want and need resources to support their families—including access to affordable childcare, housing, healthcare and quality public schools. The idea that the government can reorient people to have large families while punishing single moms and cutting SNAP, Medicaid and subsidized housing benefits is unrealistic.
The real goal is to encourage childbearing among whiter and more economically stable families while simultaneously demonizing poor women, especially poor women of color and immigrants who have children.
Emily Martin
Martin: Heritage acknowledges that government incentives, like tax credits, have been successful in supporting families. But in their proposal, the only people who’d get child tax credits are those who marry and procreate before age 30. They see this as enough to enable a cultural revolution where people sacrifice other ambitions to create large families. One other thing—they do not seem particularly interested in supporting children who already exist or ensuring that these children have everything they need.
Matsui: In 2021, the child tax credit passed during the COVID shutdown and reduced child poverty by nearly half. But the Republicans did not want to renew it so it expired. They could have reestablished the Credit in the July 2025 budget reconciliation process, but again, they did not.
Martin: It is apparent that there is a lot of hostility toward some people having children and the refusal to renew the child tax credit gives the game away. The real goal is to encourage childbearing among whiter and more economically stable families while simultaneously demonizing poor women, especially poor women of color and immigrants who have children.
Bader: The idea that children raised by single mothers are less physically and emotionally healthy rests on a lot of stereotypes. Why does the right insist on using them?
Matsui: The report picks up on the cliches and generalities used by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his widely-condemned 1965 report on the Black family. It also makes it seem as if public benefits are generous when, in fact, monthly SNAP benefits are insufficient to put food on the table for a full month. The report also refers to the allure of alimony when in fact few divorced people—about 15 percent—receive it.
Martin: The idea Heritage promotes is that some women stay single and parent alone because they prefer to collect welfare. There’s also the welfare queen mythology.
The right is hostile to the idea of women in the professional workforce. But in the case of poor women of color, they expect them to work. That’s the rationale for work rules for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, SNAP, Medicaid and housing subsidies. The report says very little about ensuring that mothers have the resources they need to stay home with their children. They expect the man in the household to support everyone on one income.
Bader: The report suggests that a high school diploma is sufficient. This floored me. Why is higher education being denigrated?
Martin: The report also has suggestions for what colleges should do to encourage early marriage and parenthood. The idea that schools should apply heavy social pressure on older teens and urge them to become engaged, a plan called “Ring by Spring,” and begin having children before graduating is incredible. The idea that the more educated a woman is, the later she will have children, if she has them at all, is a very clear tell, showing that Heritage believes that policies are needed so that fewer women pursue higher education.
The report is indicative of the broader authoritarian moment we’re in and reflects ongoing attempts to push women out of public life.
Emily Martin
Bader: Project 2025 has been broken into numerous pieces of legislation that have been successful in restricting access to reproductive healthcare by trans and nonbinary people; has cut benefits for abortion care to veterans and their dependents; and has slashed SNAP and other public benefits. Do you expect “Saving America” to lead to model bills to promote Heritage priorities?
Martin: Some parts of the report will be easy to break off and promote. I expect to see bills to make it harder to divorce. I also expect to see efforts to scale back college and graduate school loans, and I anticipate bills to regulate childcare facilities and attack Head Start.
Bader: How are feminists and other advocates pushing back against “Saving America” and MAGA more generally?
Matsui: We are in a moment of overt hostility toward women, and most people recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to control and restrict women’s lives. That’s why the National Women’s Law Center thought it was important to call out the report.
Martin: The report is indicative of the broader authoritarian moment we’re in and reflects ongoing attempts to push women out of public life. Part of the right’s efforts rest on a nostalgia for something that never existed. Many on the right are active and outspoken in working to keep women from voting. They actually talk about repealing the 19th Amendment.
We have to connect the dots between efforts to weaken women’s right to be free from harassment at home and at work and efforts to undermine the education of women and girls. Both are bound up with efforts to restrict voting rights and curtail DEI programs. ‘Saving American by Saving the Family’ reflects the right’s broad agenda and an array of organizations are pursuing litigation and engagement with state and federal legislators to push back against it. We are also working to advance narrative and cultural changes to build and maintain power.
