Family

Issues of the family, including childcare, welfare and family responsibilities, often directly impact women as mothers and primary caretakers.

Your Tax Dollars Are Funding the Trump Administration’s Patriarchal Family Agenda

PUBLISHED 5/28/2026 by

“One in three Americans are under-babied,” declared Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Mehmet Oz last week, echoing JD Vance’s contempt for “childless cat ladies.”

Guided by evangelical supporters, the Trump administration is eroding longstanding civil rights protections, restricting access to contraception and abortion, and weakening support systems for single mothers and their children. The goal is clear: to pressure women into marriage and motherhood while making the patriarchal family the center of American life.

The administration’s policies closely track the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, which seeks to incentivize what it calls “natural marriage”—a heterosexual household with a breadwinner father, stay-at-home mother and biologically related children.

Meanwhile, the administration’s new Moms.Gov website directs pregnant women to antiabortion organizations that that have been widely criticized for their misleading information about options and for their collection of patients’ sensitive personal information.

Taxpayer dollars are increasingly being used to advance a vision of society rooted in patriarchal family structures and reproductive coercion.

As a Woman Without a Country, I Was Afraid to Become a Mother. If SCOTUS Limits Birthright Citizenship, Millions More Will Share That Fear.

PUBLISHED 5/7/2026 by

I never knew if it was safe for me to have a child.

For most people, that question is about timing or readiness. For me, it was about something more fundamental. Not whether my child would belong in the United States, but whether I would be able to stay with them, have access to them, and be able to be their parent without fear.

They Blame Feminism for Falling Birth Rates—but Data Says It’s Saving Families

PUBLISHED 5/6/2026 by

Last month, the newest fertility data dropped—and the U.S. fertility rate has fallen again, hitting another record low.

Almost immediately, conservative influencers, media figures and elected officials pointed fingers at feminism, blaming women’s independence, career ambitions and access to contraception for the decline in births.

It’s a convenient narrative to push along their anti-birth control agenda. But it’s also wrong.

If you actually listen to women—and look at the data—the story becomes much clearer. The number one reason women are delaying or forgoing having children isn’t ideology, it’s affordability. Childcare costs, housing prices and healthcare access have made starting a family financially daunting for millions of Americans. Mix in student loan debt and political turmoil, and having a baby in 2026 is a scary venture. 

And yet, instead of addressing these barriers, policymakers—and organizations leading the way like the Heritage Foundation—are moving in the opposite direction. They are cutting or rolling back the very programs that make family life possible.

Virginia Just Became the First Southern State With Both Paid Leave and Paid Sick Time

PUBLISHED 4/22/2026 by | UPDATED 5/20/2026 at 11:57 A.M. PT

Advocates fought for paid leave in Virginia for more than eight years. The state’s former governor, Glenn Youngkin, vetoed paid leave bills two years in a row.

But the story changed when Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) took office in January 2026.

She not only called on the Legislature to pass these policies, but campaigned on paid leave as a core part of her platform. She also included paid leave as part of her plan to build “an economy where every Virginian can earn a good living, afford to take care of their families, and know they’ll have a secure retirement.” With the support of a strong coalition, Virginia’s Legislature responded by once again passing paid sick time and paid family and medical leave legislation.

Each year, American families lose $22.5 billion in wages due to a lack of paid leave. At a time when families are already struggling with rising costs of gas, groceries and housing, this is money that they cannot afford to go without.

Who Cares for Aging America? Still, Overwhelmingly, Women

PUBLISHED 4/17/2026 by

Women continue to provide the majority—61 percent—of unpaid caregiving in this country. They are the appointment schedulers, medication managers, financial coordinators and emotional anchors. They are the ones who leave work early, rearrange schedules, and absorb the invisible labor that keeps older adults safe and supported.

Caregiving can be an act of profound love. It can strengthen bonds, preserve dignity and allow older adults to remain in the homes they cherish. But it can also take a toll.

Women who juggle caregiving alongside careers and parenting face higher risks of burnout, depression and chronic health conditions. The triple role of worker, mother and caregiver is not simply demanding—it is unsustainable without meaningful support.

We are on a demographic collision course in this country. Birth rates are falling, while the “Silver Tsunami” is rising. By 2030, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history. This means fewer young people, more aging adults and a caregiving crisis that is already straining families and healthcare systems. We cannot build a sustainable care economy on invisible, unpaid labor. If we fail to modernize and invest in real care infrastructure, we will continue asking women to absorb a crisis that belongs to all of us.

Dissecting Trump’s (Short) Women’s History Month Statement, Line by Line

PUBLISHED 3/12/2026 by

When the White House issued a presidential message to kick off Women’s History Month, my first reaction was genuine surprise. Honestly, I did not think WHM was still recognized by the federal government.

President Donald Trump’s brief (four paragraphs) public statement doubled down on the administration’s regressive societal vision, casting women primarily as caretakers and pillars of the “American family,” while pointing to a slate of policies he claims empower them.

But a closer look at the statement reveals a familiar mix of culture-war signaling, selective policy claims, and omissions that obscure the real impacts of the administration’s agenda on women and families.

I think often about the role of the media at this moment—an obligation intrinsically greater than reporting the verbiage that comes out of the White House. It is on all of us to explicitly counter double-speak and lies and to leave a paper trail of truth for posterity. This week’s column does just that: It dissects Trump’s WHM proclamation line by line and tests each claimed reform against the record.

The Strange Hopefulness of Growing a Human While the World Burns

PUBLISHED 2/14/2026 by

As I write this, I’m in my third trimester, anxious and excited for my daughter’s arrival, which feels imminent.

Yes, it’s an extremely dark time, but that’s not exactly a historical outlier. People have been making babies throughout the worst of them. And nothing motivates me more to build a better future for all of us than this little girl—who, like every child, deserves safety, stability, love and care, and a world equipped to give it to her.

I can’t wait for her to see it.

Santa Is a Woman

PUBLISHED 12/22/2025 by

As Americans prep for the holidays and the time off from paid work that comes with them, I suspect many working moms are steeling ourselves for a season that feels anything but restful.  

The weight of society’s expectations of working moms on a normal day is crushing. As the mother of two young children, an attorney fighting for due process for immigrants in the second Trump administration and a clinical law professor, I know this firsthand.

Actually It’s Good That Fewer High Schoolers Want to Get Married

PUBLISHED 11/20/2025 by

High schoolers, and especially high school girls, are less likely than ever to say that they want to get married someday, according to new research from Pew Research Center. While boys have stayed fairly stable in how many of them say they want to marry, girls have gone from overwhelmingly wanting marriage to being even less likely than boys to want to wed.

Conservative groups and writers have met this new survey with some panic. If 12th graders don’t want to get married, I guess the logic goes, then they won’t get married, and America’s declining rates of marriage and childbearing will continue and will eventually destroy society. To them, this new survey indicates a broader social shift away from marriage and childbearing, which is bad, because in their view, the nuclear family is the good and necessary backbone of any moral and functional culture. 

But actually, it’s great that far fewer high school girls are even thinking about marriage.

The teenage girls who are thinking about their weekends instead of their weddings? They’re doing something right. 

‘It’s Not Charity, It’s Community’: Why SNAP Benefits Are Helpful for Everyone

PUBLISHED 11/5/2025 by

As federal SNAP funding stalls amid the shutdown, families, advocates and food banks are stepping up to keep people fed—but they can’t fill all the gaps.

“When we support programs like SNAP—we’re not just feeding families, we’re strengthening the entire community—every child who goes to bed with a full stomach, every parent who can focus on work instead of hunger, every landlord who can count on rent being paid—all of that adds up to a healthier, more resilient community,” said Semone Thomas, a Wisconsin SNAP advocate. “Because in the end, food security is not charity, it’s community.”