To The Contrary

Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: First, women's gains in health, education and safety are at risk.

Then, the stark divide among young Americans on marriage and parenting.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erb.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from varied perspectives.

Up first: gender equality in the US and globally.

In a new report the United Nations warns women's gains in health, education and safety are at risk.

Conflict, climate change, aid cuts and the backlash against gender equality could stall or reverse progress on multiple fronts.

Meanwhile a new poll shows Trump slipping with Hispanic voters particularly Latinas, a key voting bloc for recent Republican successes.

Joining me are former judge and federal prosecutor Debra Carnahan, Republican strategist Whitley Yates, The Intercept's political reporter Jessica Washington, and Washingto Examiner investigations editor Sarah Bedford.

So first question to you, Debra Carnahan.

What does this report tell us about the state of women's rights in the U.S.

and around the world?

It's very alarming.

Something that we know has been happening.

We have been world leaders.

I have traveled the world on women's issue and reproductive health issues.

And we were looked to as, thank you.

Thank you for helping us.

We'd like to be like you.

It's very alarming and it's very sad particularly in our own country.

I think what it really shows i that progress is very fragile, and that the one thing that helps everyone is going to be economic stability of a nation, which seems to be equal opportunity for everyone.

So women do well when the rest of the country is economically stable.

I find this report not surprising.

You know, we've seen a real rollback in economic investment in women in the United States over the course of this administration.

But you can take that back decades, for certain.

So nothing in this is incredibly surprising.

There's just been a real rollback, both in the economic investment and then also just investments in women's career attainment, women's health.

So this is unfortunate, but not surprising.

Globally, there were some concerning metrics in that report.

But in places like the United States where there are already lots of laws on the book that preserve women's equality legislatively, some of the solutions, for keeping women's progress in the United States might be more cultural than legislative.

All right.

So, 20, 30 year ago, when we started the show, the US constantly led on women and family issues.

Clearly it's not happening much anymore.

So what do we need to get going again, as the world's leader on women's right and women's and families issues Bonnie, I think it's going t take a change in the Congress.

And also, on the executive branches purview that they have, tha they've been dismantling so many programs and in USAID and, and places that we've helped around the world.

I've traveled around the world extensively on women's reproductive and health issues, and we were leaders, and they looked to u and I would feel sorry for them.

And I would talk with them and give them encouragement, and they would look at us like, wow, you have this in your country.

And we're slipping in that and we're probably going to, you know, lose our status and our ability to help women around the world, but also in our own country.

We are in a crisis for women's health.

Whitley, your thoughts, do you think, are we on the precipice of tumbling downhill, on being one of the leader of the women's rights movements around the world?

No, I'm going to be honest.

I think America is going to still be at the forefront when looking at other nations when it comes to legislation that protects women.

When it comes to the way in which we're able to participate in society.

We are always, and I believe we will maintain our position in leading the pack.

However one of the things that I think doesn't get talked about enoug is the maternal mortality rate and how that has drastically impacted statistics like these and what needs to happen, especially from administrations that are avid and staunch pro-life.

It needs to be about pro livelihood, and that pro livelihood also needs to be the health of the mother, the woman having the child.

Jessica, how much do you think this is all influenced by, the various economic states of the country?

In other words, if you're not doing well economically, do such things as equal justice, women's rights, etc.

go by the wayside?

Yeah.

So I think we can certainly point to economic hardships globally.

We know the Covid 19 pandemic had a disastrous effect on global economies.

We know that that impacts women's rights and women's ability to feed themselves, to feed their families.

I think when you look in the US context, though, it's not just about the immediate economy.

So, you know, the Trump administration, according to The Center for American Progress analysis, cut about $3 billion in investment in women's health and women's economic security.

So we both have the kind of global economic context, but we also have deliberate political choices that we have to look at as well.

Sarah, your thoughts.

Do you think because we're on the precipic of what could be fairly serious economic problems we don't know yet, but definitely the indicator are not heading in the direction most of us would like to see them head in.

Do you think the US can avoid a recession?

Do you think the US can maintain its standing as a country that's very favorable to women's rights?

Well, I think when you talk about whether the U.S.

is continuing to be a leader in women's rights and you earlier mentioned family issues, I think you have to consider what does success look like?

This administration has been very, to borrow a phrase that sometimes used pejoratively, pronatalist.

They have really encouraged getting the fertility rate up, whether that's through baby bonuses, subsidizing child care; they've talked about a lot of different policy solutions to raise the American fertility rate, if that is considered a sort of family issue.

And this idea that promoting marriage in a traditional nuclear family structure does tend to have economic benefits for women.

In that area, the administration is quite focused.

And if you measure the success of women's rights by things like access to reproductiv health care, you would consider this administration a failure on that.

Well, what do you think about the factfor example, look at China.

China has been grappling with a low birth rate for several decades now, and they've been trying to spur more women, more, more couples to have children and larger families after many, many decades of not promoting that.

Look how long it's taking China.

How long would it take the United States to start building up its population?

Well, I think China is i a slightly different situation than the United States in that their birth rate was kept artificially low by government policies for so many years, and reversing this sor of economic and cultural damage that the one child policy did do in China.

That's not the the starting point for the United States, but the United States government is competing with a lot of different, perverse incentives for growing families.

The opportunity cost of having a famil has never been higher for women.

The opportunity cost of leaving the workforce or finding a way to pay for childcare.

So there are really complicated issues throughout the economy that isn't just, you knowa one time payment can't fix those structural economic issues that are driving women away from starting families.

So what do you think, if you were President Trump or one of his aides, what would you do to spur mor families to have more children?

I was gonna say, well, first of all, I think, you know, I'm not hearing policies very few a very few were just mentioned, about supporting families and women in particular, that studies for so many years have shown that while women work outside the home, which has become a necessary thing economically speaking.

You know, there's a crisis in being able to afford childcare, you know and you're talking about people.

You want to keep the minimum wage low and it isn't affordable to go out and work to try and make money for your family because the mone goes out the door for childcare.

So it's great to say What's better, to let your famil have many children and live in even more serious poverty than if you just had 1 or 2?

Yeah, I just, I'm not seeing any programs being implemented to support families.

There are some going on in states.

I think recently, wasn't it New Mexico that said there would be free childcare?

I mean, that's historic.

I'm not saying that can happen in every state.

I'm not saying that should even happen, but we need to support that more.

You just can't keep talking about we want women to have babies.

So start having babie without support of the economic realities of what is now facing us in our country.

Well, Jessica, let me ask you, how much sense does it make?

I mean, Trump is both cutting back.

I mean, they're destroying millions of dollars worth of fertility products that they have.

They're, literally don't know where to throw them out.

They have so many of them.

And meanwhile, we need a larger population, not a smaller population.

He's also cutting way back on immigration.

How much sense does that all make, given that at least one goal would be to increase the population in the United States?

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of these policies seem to run, as you said completely counter to that idea.

So we know, and Axios reported on this, that Trump's immigration crackdown is actually going to lead to population decline soone than we anticipated previously.

So we know that's happening.

Also, you point to the Bi Beautiful Bill cuts to Medicaid, making increasing the administrative burden for families who want to earn, who want to take the earned income tax credit.

So we'r talking about a list of policies that are going to make i much harder for working families that if you are, you know, someone who is low income in the United States, could mak you think twice about being able to take on another child in your family, to have a child in the first place.

So, as you pointed out, a lot of these policies just run completely counter to the stated goal.

All right, now Whitley and then Sarah, please your thoughts and we'll go on to the next topic.

I think some pro livelihood policies that we should be seeing should center first around women's health, and that materna mortality rate, because it's not just wanting to have a child, but its wanting to be able to deliver that child and live to be able to raise that child.

Another pro livelihood policy that I believe we should see is paid leave for FMLA.

When you have to take maternity as well as paternity leave for the fathers, I think having greater incentives, and incentivizing private corporations to help with this is also going to help.

But in all honesty, people want a strong economy.

And when they're happy and when they feel like they're thriving, they will get married, have children and be able to feel like the can take care of their children.

But right now, people are very unsure and very insecure about the current economy.

So if you don't know whethe or not you're going to be able to put food on your table, adding another mouth to feed i not something that you would do in this economy.

Sarah, your final thoughts?

I would disagree that this administration's policies all run counter to the goal of increasing the size of the American families.

The two biggest obstacles for women having more children are their paychecks and their ability to afford a house that's desirable to raise a family in, that's big enough to raise a family in.

This administration, I think unlike the previous one, is more relentlessly focused on getting people's wages up, increasing the availability of good paying jobs.

And they're really, really focused on the price of housing and building more affordable single family homes to get the supply up to meet that demand so the price pressure can decrease.

Those are the two biggest obstacles, and I think solving those for women will help American family sizes grow.

All right.

Let us know what you think.

Follow me @BonnieErbe.

From the state of women's rights to views on family among Gen Z. Young Americans are sharply divided on marriage and children, with gender and politics shaping their views.

A new poll found young male Trump voters ranked having children as their top priority, while young female voter and Harris supporters placed it near the very bottom, at 12th out of 13 topics.

The same split showed up, with marriage ranked fourth by the Trump voting men, but just 11th by the Democratic voting young women.

So Whitley, what is the president supposed to do on this policy to stimulate larger families in America?

You know, I don't necessarily think that this is a policy issue.

I think that this is ver different cultural narratives.

And for a lot of young conservative men having families, having wives and children and having that lineage is very central to their sense of purpose and stability.

But I think for many progressive women, their success is a lot of times rooted and framed in thei careers and their independence.

So marriage and children just fall at a lower priority for them.

And I don't think that either side is necessarily wrong, but I think that they value things very differently, and it shows how deeply divided our cultures have become.

And in order to bridge that divide successfully, specificall within the younger generations, I think what we need to do is have a cultural shift and stop honestly demonizing either side for what they're valuing in order to build that common ground.

Any other ideas?

That's athat sounds like a pretty good place to start.

Yeah.

And you know, it's all about planned parenting.

And to your point, Bonnie I mean, there have been policies and reproductive health issues, that women feel under attack.

I mean, let's face it.

Women take on the most of the child rearing, health issues, childbearing.

It really falls on women.

And therere just a lot of young women out there that feel like they're not being supported.

The uncertainty of what's going on, and all of those play into whether or not you want to have a child.

I can see why more men want to have children, because the burden doesn't normally fall on them as much, nor the health risks.

Sarah, your take.

I agree with Whitley that this is probably much more cultural than it is about any sort of specific policy responses.

The progressive generation, or progressives in general, they tend to be more affluent, better educated, and we know that wealthier, better educated people tend to delay childbearing more than peopl from lower socioeconomic rungs.

And we also know that Democrats, especially this younger Democratic generation, is much more secular than the generations that came before them, and then their conservative counterparts.

And I do think that the secularization of America has led to lower births, because some of the dominant religions in America for so many years, like Catholicism, for example, really encourages having lots of children as a central tenet of religious belief.

If you don't have that religious belief guiding your choices, you're much more likely to be swayed by economic factors.

I think its both cultural and also I thin the policy matters here as well.

So I think on the cultural end, certainly we're seeing young me whove witnessed their families, their parents and their dynamics.

They've seen their fathers.

And we know this from research that, you know, fathers tend to have less involvement than mothers in a whole host of household tasks.

So they've seen their, you know, young women are growing up watching their mothers try and juggle, you know, work, try and juggle child care, trying to juggle taking care of the house.

They're witnessing this and realizing that's potentially my role.

And so to me that's quite a cultural issue.

And on the policy end, I think you can't discount the amount of young women who are feeling as if, because of the widespread abortion bans, because of Roe being overturned, a lack o ownership over their own bodies.

And in some way, we can really talk about this as a reclaiming of my body is not just a vessel for children, but it's something that I possess and can do with what I want.

So I think we're seeing kind of both things happen simultaneously.

Gotcha.

And, Sarah, do you think do you think President Trump will be seen as a failure if he doesn't inspire Americans to have more children?

I actually see the more children agenda as being much more closely associated with Vice President JD Vance.

His political future especially among conservatives in a conservative primary, even, could be more closely tied to that.

Thats sort of, you know, an item thats squarely in his portfolio.

You don't hear Donald Trump speaking about that as frequently.

Well, and also, he doesn't really need to.

I mean, he's well beyond the average age of becoming a father.

And he already has a, you know, pretty large group of children, right?

Yeah.

I mean, he has three wives and children from each one of his three wives.

So I agree with you.

I don't think that's really his focus right now.

And as far as JD Vanc goes, he's the vice president.

He doesn't really have a lot of power, as we know.

Vice presidents are there to support the president and be there in case something happens to the president.

So he can espouse his views and he can do what he' been doing and being very vocal.

But the policies are from the presidency.

Okay, Whitley, last word, you have it.

I really want to push back on on this idea that the policies are not necessarily beneficial.

There was a time when women were burning their bras and begging to get into the workforce, and now that they are in the workforce and the thought of being in the workforce and rearing children just seems like too much.

But that was something that a lot of women fought and advocated for.

Juxtaposition to that, you have the trad wife lifestyle, which is basically stay at home mom or a homemaker that is consistently demonized by working women.

And so we can't say that it's really the policies that are producing these types of ideologies.

It is wholeheartedly the culture.

Well, but what about the economy?

I mean we do seem to be in a situation where we're coming from years of prosperity and heading towards years of no growth or very little prosperity.

But this is something that's always happened within American history.

We've always had times of success and abundance and wealth, and then we've always also had times of trials and tribulations within this country.

So I don't want to pretend like what we're going through now, our country hasn't been through or been through worse and we've consistently been able to overcome each and every time.

So I just think we need to start looking at the culture of America now and how much it is genuinely changed, as well as gender roles.

But let's get a little bit into what's going on currently, which is we have we have a president who's getting rid of a lot of immigrants, and they tend to have more children, if you look at the reproduction tables and who has more kids, it's it's almost always immigrants than it is people who've been in this countr for generations and generations, because education is the difference.

So what would you be doing to spur Americans to have more kids?

Well, I think, also, you know, it segues right in.

You know, the Earth is groaning.

We have a huge Earth population as we have climate chang happening and water is rising.

So there are a lot of issues, I think, that factor into people being uncertain about wanting to bring children into this world.

And certainly governmen should not be pulling programs, pulling SNAP, reducing it, shutting down rural hospitals that will no longer be able to afford to stay open that service a lot of these women in their health care needs and having a baby.

So you can't start pulling the rug out from underneath women and going, but I want you to have more kids.

I mean, that is not going to work.

Not in today's society.

No it's not.

So, anybody else want to throw anything in before we close the show?

I mean, I think we saw, what, just this week that there was a bill to help increase health, specifically in rural communities, focused on hospitals.

And so I do thin the administration is looking at what's happening in America and they are responding to it.

At the same time, I think we've seen tim and time again in this country where we've imported groups of people from different cultures, and that has created problems, some of those problems that we've never been able to get over.

And so looking at immigration as a way of population increase does come with its own sets of challenges when it comes to the culture of America and blending those cultures together in a diverse way that allows for all of them to feel included To piggyback off of that as well, if I could really quick, you know, the American birth rate and the growth of families, it's more than just numbers on a spreadsheet.

It is a real cultural It strikes at the heart of, you know, American families feeling like they can get ahead and stay ahead.

And we sort of saw this with the way the Biden administration treated wage growth and job growth.

There were a lot of working class voters who rebelled against Democrat because the Biden administration would constantly point to numbers on a spreadsheet and say, see, look, there are plenty of jobs.

Wages are going up.

But there were a lot of working class American families who didn't feel like that was extending to them, because a lot of those economic numbers were being driven by foreign born workers.

And so I do think you have t look at this more holistically and not as just some sort of dry economic number in a vacuum.

Encouraging American families to have more children and letting everyone have the number of children that they want to have and not feel held back, you can' replace that with immigration.

All right.

And I'm sure that's something that everybody at this momen in time is paying attention to because we have a large grou of young people in this country of childbearing age and they've been holding back, and maybe they need t not hold back, I don't know, but whatever is going on now is not getting us t where we want to be right now.

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