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“When the Founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness,’ what they meant might be understood today as in essence ‘pursuit of Blessedness.’ That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained — to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family — marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like. pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family — marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.”

– Project 2025

In the 1993 movie The Firm, Abby McDeere, played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, tries to warn her husband Mitch, played by Tom Cruise, about taking a job at the firm that’s heavily recruiting him. She tells him about a conversation she had with another lawyer’s wife that was “weird.” When Mitch pushes her on what “weird” means, she snaps, “Well, here is a quote: The firm does not ‘forbid’ me to take a job; and they ‘encourage’ children. Ask me why.”

“Why?” Mitch asks. 

“Because they promote stability.” 

Mitch ignores his wife. Accepts the job. And quickly realizes he’s joined what amounts to an organized crime ring that operates through mutually assured destruction. Lawyers become enmeshed in the company, have families and lives, and by the time they realize they’re the bad guys, there is no way out. Their stability has trapped them.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative blueprint for America, reads like it was inspired by The Firm. The document begins by asserting that family is the foundation of the American dream. It states clearly that the first promise of the project is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” It argues, “The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics — the well-being of the American family.”

The real threats to America as outlined in Project 2025 are the falling birth rate and the rise of single motherhood. And it's not just a fringe ideology. The fight over “family values” is a mainstream concern. Think pieces and books, even ones written by progressives, wring their hands over the left's rejection of family and children.

“...The challenge is that the debate about the collapsing birthrate and the crisis of the family — really a global crisis, not just an American one — is incredibly important but also inevitably comes across as weird to a lot of people, for reasons I’ve tried to write about before, because it’s an issue that’s connected to all kinds of intimate questions and one we aren’t accustomed to debating,” wrote Ross Douthat in a recent piece for The New York Times.

So while it may sound weird to hear clips of JD Vance talking about women bearing children and fertility rates, the reality is he’s echoing the concern held by most of the right. The American family is in crisis and something must be done.

And he isn’t wrong, exactly. The American family is in crisis. Childcare is unaffordable; the choice to have children isn’t even a choice for 43 percent of American women in states with abortion bans; the wage gap is increasing and so is the cost of living.

And the American family looks different than it ever has. Marriage rates are declining. The majority of children are raised in “nontraditional” homes, which should make them traditional families. Two-parent families, with one father, one mother, two kids, and a Live Laugh Love sign in the kitchen of a suburban home, have a chokehold on what we see as normal. But the reality is that most families have different arrangements: Kids raised by queer parents, grandparents, cohabitating parents, and single parents.

In response to this change, conservative policy pushes abortion bans, cuts to the social safety net, and funding to programs that offer marriage as a solution to poverty and homelessness. It’s women without men who are the problem, Project 2025’s authors argue. “Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts,” they write.

And that’s the heart of the issue: Women not choosing men.

Project 2025 outlines policies that are not some dystopian future, but already being put into place. Cuts to public schools, cuts to SNAP benefits, cuts to Medicaid, rolling back reproductive rights — all moves that push women out of the workforce and back into caretaking roles. The idea is that forcing recalcitrant and independent women to marry, have children, and stay married, is the solution to all America’s problems. The firm “encourages” having children, after all.

These ideas have precedent in American history. Policy solutions like this were put into place after World War II in an effort to move women out of the workforce and into the home. 

This is why JD Vance (and David Brooks and Ross Douthat) are obsessed with your uterus, because when you can cut off social safety nets, disinvest from public schools, and restrict reproductive rights, you can force women out of public life. It’s misogyny, pure and simple, that sees free women choosing lives outside of marriage and having children as a threat to American society.

Otherwise, why be worried that women are choosing to be single? Singlehood is not a moral failing. Being a single mother isn’t a moral failing. The “nontraditional” family isn’t cause for alarm unless you are afraid of women being free to choose and not choosing you.

Because if the goal were about supporting children and families — why wouldn’t they be pushing fathers into caregiving roles? Why wouldn’t Project 2025 be about federally funded paternity leave? Or strengthening LGBTQ families? Or giving children free lunches at schools? If fatherlessness is a scourge, why not support families with two fathers?

We know that plans like these don’t actually work to accomplish their ostensible goals.

Even if you agree with the premise that the American family is in crisis, forcing women into having children doesn’t strengthen the American family. It increases rates of domestic violence and is correlated with higher rates of child poverty. In fact, studies have shown that in countries with liberal divorce laws, marriages increased by 9 percent. 

Also, if the goal is encouraging people to have children (and I don’t think it should be, but even if it is), according to the US Census Bureau, “Laws that guarantee generous financial compensation upon divorce have been shown to increase first births among highly educated women. Knowing that they will be compensated for lost wages reduces the risk of leaving the labor market to have children.”

But the point has never been caring for families. The point is putting people — women — into a position where, when they look around and realize what’s actually going on, they’re trapped. They cannot leave.