Heritage Foundation urges federal incentives for marriage and childbearing, from wedding payments to marriage-only tax credits

A January report from the conservative Heritage Foundation lays out an ambitious blueprint for steering U.S. federal policy toward promoting marriage and increasing childbearing. Titled "Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years," the document proposes a mix of direct financial incentives, federally run relationship programs, regulatory changes, and research priorities designed to make marriage and early family formation more likely.

Some of the proposals described in the report are transactional and concrete: the authors suggest government-backed "marriage bootcamps" conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in collaboration with churches, foundations, and private donors. Advertisements would recruit cohabiting couples with children to attend relationship education and mentoring; those who complete the program could be married at a communal ceremony and receive a $5,000 payment on their wedding day. The report also endorses a federally run messaging campaign promoting marriage with slogans such as "Give her a ring before she gives you a baby."

Other financial incentives proposed aim to influence behavior over a longer time horizon. The report recommends expanding so-called Trump Accounts—investment accounts seeded at birth—into a New Early Starter Trust (NEST) that would be seeded with at least $2,500 when a child is born. Access to the funds would be contingent on marriage or deferred until the beneficiary reaches age 30, and withdrawals would be tax-advantaged for those who marry before 30. Separately, the authors propose a new Family and Marriage (FAM) tax credit reserved for married parents: married joint filers who have a child together and meet minimum income thresholds could receive a $4,418 refundable credit in the birth year and for three years afterward, rising to $5,521 for third and subsequent children. The plan also includes an additional $2,000 per child under age five for families with a stay-at-home parent.

The report’s architects acknowledge the mixed track record of federally sponsored marriage programs and admit past results have been "modest," even as they argue for a renewed federal effort in relationship education, parenting skills, and father involvement. Critics note that countries offering direct cash bonuses to new parents have generally not seen large, sustained increases in fertility rates, casting doubt on whether payments and tax credits alone would meaningfully raise births in the United States.

Beyond financial carrots, the Heritage report advances socially conservative regulatory and technological proposals. It calls for nationwide age verification on social media and online pornography, endorses passage of the Kids Online Safety Act to compel platforms to protect minors from broadly defined harms, and expresses alarm about emerging technologies such as sex robots, surrogacy arrangements, and artificial wombs. These recommendations reflect a concern with cultural and technological forces the report’s authors view as hostile to traditional family structures.

Intermixed with the pro-natalist agenda are policy prescriptions that align with classical-liberal priorities. The report recommends welfare reform, a return to a gold standard to restrain inflation, removal of rent control and onerous zoning rules, protections for gig work and independent contracting, and more flexible tax treatment for after-tax savings invested in certain accounts. The authors also criticize overcredentialism and argue against excessive federal subsidies for higher education—positions that could appeal to conservatives and libertarians uninterested in explicit family-policy engineering.

Despite some market-oriented elements, the Heritage Foundation does not shy away from repurposing federal resources to achieve family goals. The report urges the National Institutes of Health to prioritize infertility research and proposes making "restorative reproductive medicine" eligible for Title X Family Planning funding. It calls for expanding Family and Medical Leave Act eligibility—currently a right to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave—to provide six months of leave for new mothers. The document also recommends conditioning federal grants on compliance with family-policy objectives, penalizing grant recipients deemed to "discriminate" against marriage and families, and adding a "Family Impact Appendix" to major federal rules to assess how regulations might influence marriage stability and childbearing.

Taken together, the proposals sketch a comprehensive effort to reorient the federal government toward favoring married parents. Whether these measures would succeed in reversing long-term declines in marriage and fertility is uncertain, and the report mixes ideas with varying evidentiary support. Nonetheless, the document lays out concrete steps for lawmakers and administrators who favor a more interventionist federal role in shaping family life, signaling a potential flashpoint in debates over the proper reach of government in private family decisions.