The GOP Is Anti-Family and Anti-Kid

One hears endless bloviating by Republicans about how the GOP is the party of "family values" and allegedly supportive of families and children.    They endlessly attack Democrats as being "anti-family" and "anti-child".  Like so much coming from the lips of today's Republicans, the claims are a lie and if one looks at Republican policies, they are actually anti-family and anti-children.  The "family values" of Republicans consists of seeking to inflict Bronze Age derived religious dogma on all Americans and endless demonstrations of false piety.   As for families and children, only some count in the GOP universe: white, right wing "Christian," heterosexual headed families, preferably with a married man and woman.  The rest? Merely disposable garbage to be discarded and maligned in the endless GOP quest to demonize those they label as "other."   The hypocrisy of these Republicans is even worse when one looks at the consequences of actual GOP policies: increased child poverty, higher child mortality rates, and reduced health care for families most in need.  While Democrats are hardly perfect on issues of families and children, they are head and shoulders above Republicans whose policies are diametrically opposed to their claims that they are pro-family and pro-children.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the true anti-family and anti-child Republican policies.  Here are excerpts:

In attacking Democrats and Kamala Harris, Republicans have been making a legitimate point: One of our major political parties has worked to undermine America’s families.

The problem? While neither party has done enough to support families and children, the one that is failing most egregiously is — not surprisingly — the one led by the thrice-married tycoon who tangled with a porn star, boasted about grabbing women by the genitals and was found by a jury to have committed sexual assault.

You’d think that would make it awkward for the Republican Party to preach family values. But with the same chutzpah with which Donald Trump reportedly marched into a dressing room where teenage girls were half-naked, the G.O.P. claims that it’s the Democrats who betray family values.

“The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” JD Vance said in 2021. . . . he went further in a conversation with Megyn Kelly, saying that Democrats “have become anti-family and anti-kid.”

This is gibberish. Children are more likely to be poor, to die young and to drop out of high school in red states than in blue states. The states with the highest divorce rates are mostly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, it’s in red states that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly because of lack of access to reliable contraception).

One of President Biden’s greatest achievements was to cut the child poverty rate by almost half, largely with the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans killed the program, sending child poverty soaring again. Can anything be more anti-child?

Well, maybe our firearms policy is. Guns are the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers, largely because of Republican intransigence and refusal to pass meaningful gun safety laws.

It’s because of the G.O.P. that the United States is one of only a few countries in the world without guaranteed paid maternity leave. Republicans fought universal health care and resisted the expansion of Medicaid; that’s one reason a child in the United States is three times as likely to die by the age of 5 as a child in, say, Slovenia or Estonia.

Think of it this way: We’d be saving the life of one American child between the ages of 1 and 5 every three hours if we had the same child mortality level as Norway or Finland.

Project 2025, a blueprint for a Trump administration that Trump is frantically trying to disavow, would make things worse. It would end Head Start, a lifeline for low-income children, and would dismantle the Department of Education.

Republican extremism has led to obstacles to in vitro fertilization, especially after an Alabama court ruled that a frozen embryo must be considered a child. The Southern Baptist Convention, a bastion of support for Trump, this summer criticized I.V.F.

Vance has supported a watered-down bill that he says protects I.V.F., but Republican senators blocked stronger legislation to defend I.V.F. fertility treatments and expand access. They are leaving hanging so many of the one in seven women who have trouble conceiving or sustaining a pregnancy. Can anything be more anti-family?

I’m troubled by the collapse of marriage in America’s working class — more than 70 percent of Americans without a high school diploma are unmarried. If we care about child poverty, we must face the reality that households headed by single moms are five times as likely to live in poverty as those with married couples. So concerns about family and children are legitimate, and Democrats should do better.

But for Republicans to blame Democrats is ludicrous, for the G.O.P. has seemingly gone out of its way to undermine families and children.

Union membership among men raises their marriage rates, for example, apparently because they then earn more money and become more stable and appealing as partners. But Republicans have worked for decades to undermine unions.

Likewise, one way to raise marriage rates may be to help teenage girls avoid pregnancy; then they may be more likely to marry in their 20s. But Republicans have often been suspicious of comprehensive sex education and have tried to defund Title X family-planning programs, and it’s no accident that the states with the highest rates of births to teenage mothers are all red states.

I’m glad Republicans are squawking about the challenges facing families and children. But if Trump, Vance and other Republicans want to blame those most responsible for the plight of families and children in America today, they should look in the mirror and hang their heads in shame.