The Trump White House is reportedly considering offering new mothers a “baby bonus” of $5,000 to encourage people to have more children. That might seem like a lot of money. And certainly, for some families, including the families of the 11 million U.S. children who live below the poverty line and get by on less than $33,000 a year for a family of four, it is.
That’s why a mom I’ll call Sierra — one of the mothers I interviewed in the research for my recent book — couldn’t believe it when the first of the Covid Economic Impact Payments landed in her mailbox. “I was just so happy,” she recalled in April 2020, talking about the first check for $1,700 that she received earlier that month for herself and her toddler. “I paid my car insurance,” she said, “and I had got my son a lot of clothes because he’s growing, and he needs some more shoes. I put some in my savings account.”
In the grand scheme of parenting, however, $5,000 barely covers even a fraction of the basics that children need.
At the time, Sierra had just moved halfway across the country to live closer to her son’s father. She hoped to find a job like the one in food service that she left when she moved. But almost as soon as she arrived, pandemic layoffs began, leaving her with few jobs to apply for or places to turn for support. Without Covid relief money, she told me, “It probably would have been even harder, because I know I can’t really ask a lot of people for money because a lot of people that I know, their jobs laid them off.”Sierra also told me that the money — especially on top of the rent relief she was granted because of Covid — meant she did not have to stress about finding a job right away. And it meant that Sierra, who (like a quarter of all U.S. mothers) had to go back to paid work less than two weeks after giving birth, got to spend more time with her son than ever before. “I’m enjoying it,” she told me, “because when I used to work a lot, I used to complain how I didn’t have enough time to be with my son.”
In the grand scheme of parenting, however, $5,000 barely covers even a fraction of the basics that children need.
The Department of Agriculture finds that, on average, it costs American families about $13,000 a year for every child they’re raising. In some parts of the country, that cost is over $20,000 a year per child. Which means by the time your child reaches adulthood, they’ll likely have cost you about a quarter-million dollars — before factoring in any savings for college.On its own, then, $5,000 is only enough for:
The out-of-pocket costs for a hospital birth, if you’re lucky enough to have insurance, plus about half of the out-of-pocket costs you’ll likely pay if, like roughly 1 in 10 babies in the U.S., yours needs NICU care, or
Four months of center-based child care for an infant, or six months if you’re lucky enough to find a family home child care provider willing to take infants and with open spots, or
About eight months of baby formula, if you’re not supplementing with breast milk, or
All of the diapers your baby will need in their lifetime, plus all the car seats and boosters they’ll need to ride in a vehicle, plus clothes for their first two years.
A $5,000 payment is also a pittance compared to what President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan would have offered families. If billionaire-backed senators like Joe Manchin hadn’t killed the bill, it would have included:An expanded child tax credit, like the one that briefly pulled millions of children out of poverty in 2021, before Senate Republicans, with help from a few Democrats, refused to extend it in 2022, Twelve weeks of guaranteed paid family leave for parents of new babies, putting U.S. policies closer to those of most other countries, where paid leave has been guaranteed for years, Universal, affordable, high-quality child care for families, plus support for child care workers, who are currently among the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. economy, a fact that is driving shortages in care, Free preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old, and two years of free community college for every student who wants to attend, plus additional investments to make college more affordable for the low- and middle-income students who often find themselves drowning in debt. These provisions are the kinds of real support that families told me they needed when I asked them what would make it easier for them to raise their kids. As one mom, who makes about $75,000 a year as a college professor, and whose husband makes about $45,000 a year as a middle school teacher, told me in 2022: “I need the child tax credit to come back. I need a financial cushion. I need time and reliable care for my children. I need consistency. I need institutions to step up and do what they are supposed to do to be humane.”
Jessica Calarco
Dr. Jessica Calarco is a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of "Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net." 
