As the current administration bemoans the lack of a baby boom in the U.S., many public commenters have staked out their own “natalism” positions. Pro-natalists believe there need to be more births, while anti-natalists believe there need to be fewer births. Motivations on various sides come from fears of race replacement, overpopulation, underpopulation, environmental catastrophe, a desire for stronger community, religion, misogyny, and more1.
The modern debate on natalism in the U.S. is irrelevant to the experience of working people in this country. People are going to have children whether or not a stranger takes a pro- or anti-natalist stance. The question we should be asking isn’t whether people should or shouldn’t have children. We should instead ask how our society should provide for the physical, emotional, and psychological needs of children who are learning about the world around them and how to be a person, the parents who need support to survive, and the health of society as a whole. To support the needs of those children, leftists must fight for paid parental leave and universal childcare among other policies such as Medicare for All, abortion protections, and more to advocate for what is best for humans not corporations.
The Status Quo
Currently, the only form of guaranteed leave for new parents in the U.S. is offered under the Family Medical Leave Act. This provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave for employees working for employers with more than 50 employees. Only 56% of employees in the U.S. are eligible for FMLA, and the current program could easily be scaled back or eliminated by the Trump administration. In a country without universal healthcare, many new parents are expected to go without pay after likely incurring an exorbitant hospital bill. The resulting financial strain often leaves working-class families without the means to support their young children. The current system exacerbates systemic problems of child poverty, homelessness, and the extreme cost of childcare serving as a barrier to reenter the workforce, creating a cyclical crisis.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022 because abortion rights were not codified into law, abortion rights have come under attack across the country. States that still have expansive abortion protections, such as Illinois, are seeing an uptick in people traveling to them for abortion care. In 2024, the Chicago Abortion Fund received requests from over 16,000 people in 41 states for assistance receiving abortion care in Chicago. Chicago DSA members are currently fundraising for the organization as part of the National Network of Abortions annual Fund-a-thon. In states with abortion bans, maternal deaths are on the rise, although those states refuse to investigate.
Looking at just Illinois, in 2025 average rent is $1,592 while average childcare for 1 child was $1,364. The state’s $15 minimum wage puts a single full-time earner at $2,400 monthly pre tax. This already puts a single parent earning minimum wage at -$556 per month (pre-tax) after rent and childcare. A two-adult household on minimum wage would have just $1,844 (pre-tax) after rent and childcare, which quickly disappears considering utilities, transportation, clothing, additional medical costs, groceries, and more. In Illinois, a two-person household can’t qualify for SNAP benefits if family members earn more than $2,811 a month, and those benefits amount to $536 for a two-person household. This is unsustainable for our society.
Despite no efforts to advance the policy during Biden’s term, the 2024 DNC platform included support for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. The platform also supports investments in child care to make it affordable. It references the American Rescue Plan’s subsidy of childcare centers, but crucially it does not propose universal childcare. Even in Illinois, where Democrats have fully controlled the state government since 2019, the state still has no paid parental leave or universal childcare. It is clear that Democrats either don’t believe in those rights, they don’t see them as a priority, or they don’t want to fight for them. The socialist left must be making these demands.
There are currently 13 states (plus DC) that have mandatory paid family leave systems. These are either a social insurance policy funded through a payroll tax or a private insurance system. Ten states have a scheme endorsed by the National Council of Insurance Legislators (a lobbying organization for the insurance industry) that has pushed for states to adopt private family leave insurance. The most generous paid parental leave, provided by 12 states, is just 12 weeks2.
Most states that are working towards universal childcare plan to offer universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds. This reinforces the need for paid parental leave that can cover families until a child ages into universal childcare. Six states have universal preschool for four year olds. Vermont also has universal preschool for three year olds. Four states are implementing universal preschool, while four other states have recently passed laws to implement universal preschool. In Illinois, JB Pritzker’s 2025 budget proposal included money for the early childhood education block grants and child care assistance program, though the block grants are only for preschool aged children and the child care assistance program is means-tested.
Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) chapters have fought for reforms across the country, with varying degrees of success. Information on local chapter endorsements without national DSA endorsement of the campaign is only available to the national organization starting in 2024, so some data is incomplete without reading every single chapter’s website or social media, or knowing who to ask in every chapter. Looking at the DSA National Electoral Committee’s available endorsements information, which includes endorsements for candidates and ballot referenda but not endorsement of legislative efforts in city councils or state houses, we see a picture of strong fights for abortion rights, with some movement to universal preschool. Oregon chapters won a statewide campaign to protect abortions there in November 2018. Portland DSA won a preschool for all campaign for Oregon in November 2020. Lawrence Kansas DSA won their campaign to protect statewide abortion rights in August 2022. Kentucky chapters won their campaign for abortion protections statewide in November 2022. Western Montana DSA won a campaign for abortion protections in November 2022. Chapters across Florida endorsed and unfortunately lost a referendum to protect abortion rights in November 2024.
The Right Ratchet
The right wing, in their pushes to repeal abortion rights and more, clearly wants to have birth for birth’s sake. They want a steady stream of new workers who have no expectations. They are punishing people for having abortions, including imposing the death penalty. Project 2025 is attempting to exert patriarchal control over society, which requires strict gender norms, leading to their attacks on bodily autonomy of LGBTQI+ people and women. They want to force women out of the workplace and trap them in the domestic sphere. By weakening workplace protection enforcement through firing and cutting staff at the NLRB, EEOC, OFCCP, and dismantling DEI programs, the Trump administration is setting the field for a mass push of women out of the workplace. They are enacting voting restrictions to discourage participation in democracy. Trump has effectively tasked Elon Musk’s “DOGE” with gutting all public social safety nets that do currently exist, including removing funding for the Head Start early education program.
The Left Horizon
As socialists, we should always fight for universal programs. There are basic policy objectives the Left needs to fight for, if not at the federal level at this moment, then at state levels. This ensures equal access to benefits and reduces administrative burden and costs3. These include establishing a Medicare-for-All program covering all reproductive healthcare, expanding and protecting abortion rights, federal laws guaranteeing comprehensive paid parental leave, universal childcare, and prenatal paid time off, to name a few. If we are going to have shorter paid parental leaves, we need to have universal childcare start sooner than three or four years old.
Paid Parental Leave and Universal Childcare must be won in tandem with abortion rights. We need to create a world that works for people, not an economy that wants to extract maximum profits out of people. If someone chooses to have children, we must give time for parents to recover from birth and the adjustment to a new child, and for that child and their parents to bond and have their needs met. We must also provide a place for children to be safe to grow when parents choose to return to work before the child reaches school age. This includes accessible childcare after school and during school breaks.
This will require us to tax the rich to provide the world we want and deserve. We must fight for a vibrant public life to ensure we do not isolate new parents. We must invest in places with programming for child development and socialization with their families, including robust public libraries, public parks, public transportation, investment in public arts and cultural events, and public community centers. We need democratic socialist cadre candidates and elected officials who will publicly fight for these policies. We need democratic unions that will fight alongside us for these reforms and who will organize the public workers who will make up this infrastructure and services. We need DSA chapters putting on public political education and talking to people on the doors about who we are and why we support these initiatives, and we need to be clear to the public about who is preventing us from creating a better world when capitalists seek to stop us.
- For a fuller accounting on the natalism debate from the Left in date publication order, see Dustin Guastella in Damage Magazine, Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic, Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs, and Robin Peterson in Spectre Journal. ↩︎
- For a comprehensive list of what states have what levels of coverage, consult this Bipartisan Policy Explainer. ↩︎
- For more about the benefits of universal programs, see Abdallah Fayyad’s “What if everyone qualified for welfare benefits?” ↩︎
