Prepared by Arielle Kuperberg for the Council on Contemporary Families symposium Policies Affecting Families: What We Know, and What to Expect in the Second Trump Term
Immigration. Abortion. Anti-Trans laws. Student debt. Reversing the falling fertility rate. All these topics have been the subject of intense debates in the past several years, and some have been the subject of executive orders and new actions by the Trump administration in his first 50 days in office. In this symposium, the Council on Contemporary Families brings together leading experts on these topics to discuss how these policies affect families, and what to expect in the second Trump administration.
One concern of the new administration is the low fertility rate in the United States, with women having an average of 1.62 children in 2023, a historic low that is far below the “replacement” level of 2.1 children per woman that is necessary for stable population levels. In Vice President Vance’s first public address in office, he focused on the falling fertility rate, saying “It is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids, to bring them into the world and to welcome them as the blessings that they are.”
As Daniel L. Carlson, Vivekananda Das, and Cole Grevelink discuss in their brief report for this symposium, one important reason for the fertility rate decline is the growing unaffordability of having children. They discuss policies designed to make child raising easier, analyzing possible changes to the Child Tax Credit system proposed in a bill recently introduced in congress by a Republican congressman. As Carlson and colleagues find, all families with children would see an increase in child tax credits under the proposed system. The biggest increases would go to wealthy families and families with stay-at-home parents (who are less likely to benefit from current policies). However, lower income families would also see a larger percent of their income returned to them, and those in lower cost states would also see a greater benefit. Yet Carlson and colleagues conclude that it is doubtful that such changes to policy would substantially increase the country’s fertility rates.
Another way to tackle falling fertility may be to reduce other costs to families. In their symposium report, student debt experts Arielle Kuperberg, Daniel Collier, Joan Maya Mazelis, and Fenaba Addo discuss their research, which finds that student debt is reducing marriage and childbearing rates. The loan pause first enacted by the Trump administration during the COVID pandemic provides further evidence of how loan debt affects families. Kuperberg and colleagues find that many responded to the loan pause by using the money from paused loan payments to pay for weddings, childbearing expenses, home purchases, and spending more on their children. But when the pause ended, some moved back home with their parents, and one in five parents pulled their children out of extracurricular activities. The evidence suggests that student loan debt restricts the ability of young adults to provide the type of life they want to provide for children – so some are having fewer children, or not having children at all.
Abortion restrictions may also be viewed as a policy to increase fertility rates – but in a symposium piece by Alicia Walker, she finds that restricting abortion does not decrease abortion rates. In fact, abortion rates have increased in the U.S. since many states began restricting abortion in the past 3 years. However, what does increase with abortion restrictions are the risks associated with abortion. Confusion over local abortion laws has led to deaths after women experiencing miscarriages or other pregnancy complications have been denied care.
Abortion restrictions can have disproportionate effects on undocumented immigrants, as Sameera Nayak discusses in her symposium report. Immigrant women are more likely to have low incomes, and are less likely to have access to health insurance and health care, making it harder for them to access abortions, especially if they need to travel to obtain one. They may also face detention and deportation while seeking abortion care. And many of the states that have restricted access to abortion are the same states that have especially restrictive policies when it comes to immigration. Some states are also now attempting to reclassify abortion as homicide – and recently Florida passed laws mandating the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who are convicted of homicide. These conditions combine to make immigrant women especially vulnerable when abortion restrictions are passed.
Speaking of immigration, reform to immigration is another major platform of the Trump administration, and has already been the subject of executive orders and deportation campaigns. Immigration expert Bethany Letiecq discusses the history of U.S. immigration policy, and some of the actions on immigration that the Trump administration has already taken. She discusses her research during the first Trump administration on Central American mothers living as undocumented immigrants in the United States, finding that half experienced depression and 80% were worried about deportation and family separation. Mothers who experienced their romantic partners’ deportations lost housing, experienced food insecurity, and had an accumulation of other hardships. These experiences are likely to become more widespread as the United States faces what Letiecq calls “the most significant anti-immigrant movement in decades.”
Finally, Gina May and Barbara J. Risman discuss the growing split in states between those restricting LGBTQIA+ rights and those protecting them. Over half of states have banned trans youth in sports, half have restricted gender-affirming care for minors, and some restrict bathroom use or even pronoun use. On the other side, over twenty states now allow the “x” category to be used for nonbinary people on identification documents, almost half restrict employment discrimination or discrimination in public accommodations based on gender and sexual orientation, half restrict housing discrimination, and twenty-two states restrict education discrimination. These differences are evidence of a growing split between states when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation protections – or restrictions.
Time will tell how these policies will play out, and what further policy changes will be made in the current administration. And some of these policies may have counteracting effects; for instance immigrant women tend to have more children than American-born women, so efforts to reduce immigration may counteract any successful efforts to increase the average fertility rate in the United States. But one thing is for sure – families have been and will continue to be affected by these policies, whether those effects are intended or not.
About the Author
Arielle Kuperberg is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Sociology, Anthropology and Public Health Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Co-Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families. She can be reached at akuperbe@umbc.edu. Follow her on X at @ATKuperberg or on Bluesky at @ariellekuperberg.bsky.social.
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Symposium Overview
1. Executive Summary: Policies Affecting Families: What we know, and what to expect in the second Trump term
Arielle Kuperberg
2. Can Raising the Child Tax Credit Halt Falling U.S. Fertility?
Daniel L. Carlson, Vivekananda Das, and Cole Grevelink
3. Lessons from the Loan Pause: More Evidence that Student Debt is Reducing Marriage and Childbearing
Arielle Kuperberg, Daniel Collier, Joan Maya Mazelis, and Fenaba Addo
4. Abortion After the Fall of Roe v. Wade
Alicia M. Walker
6. On Immigration under a Second Trump Presidency
Bethany L. Letiecq
7. From Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage to Executive Bans on ‘Gender Ideology’: Progress and Setbacks in LGBTQIA+ Laws in the Past Decade
Gina May and Barbara J. Risman
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About CCF
The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.
The Council helps keep journalists informed of new and forthcoming research on gender and family-related issues via the CCF Network. To locate researchers or request copies of previous research briefs, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.
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