Family tax benefits are crucial for supporting parents and children. With the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act set to expire in 2025, the child tax credit will be slashed in half. Democrats and Republicans are positioning themselves for a major overhaul of the tax code, and both have signaled plans not only to preserve the current child tax credit, but to expand it.
Even as both sides bargain, they must avoid the long-running pattern of overcomplicating family benefits. Especially for new parents, benefits work better when they are simple, swift and flexible.
The current child tax credit helps children by trusting their parents, most of whom use the credit for essential needs like food and housing. Proposed “baby bonuses” would offer additional support for parents during a child’s first year — a critical time of adjustment for families. However, when the government overcomplicates our benefit programs, or tries to dictate specific parenting approaches, working families often get left behind. With every overengineered detail, the initial intent of the program is easily overshadowed.
During the formula shortages caused by poor manufacturing practices, for instance, mothers receiving WIC benefits were hamstrung by the government-mandated regional monopolies for formulas. Even in ordinary times without such acute shortages, it can be challenging for families to meet their children’s nutritional needs when the government dictates their shopping lists. A similar pattern plays out in child care subsidies, which can exclude families in which one parent stays home (as in the case of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit). Additionally, families who prefer to receive child care from family, friends and neighbors find little support in proposals that prioritize subsidies and income caps for center-based care.
A “baby bonus” is an effective way to provide support to more families with fewer complications. Every family has unique needs, and flexible assistance can help parents serve the best interests of their children in their particularity. For a worker with only guaranteed unpaid FMLA leave after the birth of a child, a baby bonus can act as paid family leave. For another family, it could help defray the costs of converting a guest room for a grandmother to stay long term to help older kids adjust to a new baby. In another family’s case, a baby bonus might cover additional childcare for an older child while the mother is hospitalized to reduce the risk of a preterm delivery. The best family support allows parents to make the decisions that are best for their specific circumstances.
In my own experience, each of our three children has brought with them different needs. We would have spent a hypothetical baby bonus very differently after each delivery. With our firstborn, we initially thought we would only need normal baby gear, but after an emergency C-section, we had to quickly order additional supplies before leaving the hospital. Since I couldn’t easily handle the stairs for weeks because of the surgery, we had to quickly set up a baby changing station on each floor of the house. For our second child, our unexpected cost was a lengthy course of pelvic floor physical therapy for me due to a childbirth injury. Our most recent baby arrived with the least drama and a good number of hand-me-downs. Our only significant new expense was mounting a baby seat to our Bunch cargo trike so our little one could come along for school drop-offs.
I’d love to see more support for moms to access the pelvic floor physical therapy, which so many of us need. I’m also grateful that the existence of electric cargo trikes (and slimline car seats) helped us avoid the fertility-suppressing costs of upsizing a car when a third child is born. However, I don’t assume that our priorities reflect every family’s most urgent needs. Flexible payments allow each family to make the decisions that best suit their situation – whether it’s covering a crisis or simply easing the transition as the family grows.
Support for families is most effective when it follows the principles of subsidiarity, trusting parents to wisely use the funds they receive for their children. Instead of trying to micromanage family benefits with prescriptive, one-size-fits-all solutions that may not suit every household or quickly become outdated, policymakers in both parties should focus on simplifying these benefits. This approach ensures that support remains flexible and adaptable to the unique needs of each family. In a time of falling fertility, meeting parents’ needs and honoring their work as parents is a prerequisite for asking the next cohort of potential parents to prioritize children in their lives.
Leah Libresco Sargeant is the author of “Arriving at Amen” and “Building the Benedict Option.” She runs the Substack Other Feminisms, focused on the dignity of interdependence.