#110. "How about a 1.68% discount?"
I bet you can guess where this is going
A clothing brand you’re interested in but have never made a purchase from sends a flyer to your house. The front of the flyer depicts a woman your age, wearing a sweater you’ve had your eye on for ages, but you don’t know if you can pull it off. But she’s dressed like how you want to dress, in the vague image you have of yourself five years from now. You flip to the back of the flyer to see if there’s an offer. It’s a 1.68% discount on your first purchase. Hmm, you think. That doesn’t seem like much, especially for a sweater as nice as this one.
Are you immediately buying, or are you throwing the flyer in the trash? Maybe you’re conflicted, so you stick it in your stack of unopened mail for later, and eventually forget about it entirely. 1.68% off isn’t particularly memorable.
What kind of “welcome” discount usually gets you to act? 15%? 20%? Higher?
If you haven’t already guessed, me being me – this hypothetical clothing brand is the U.S. government, and the 1.68% discount is what the Trump administration is considering paying new mothers when they have a baby. A $5,000 “baby bonus” works out to 1.68% of the average total cost of raising a child for 18 years, which is currently $297,674.
Maybe some of you would happily take the 1.68% discount on a sweater you’ll love for 18 years, but I’m guessing that only applies to those of you who were already pretty positive you were going to buy the sweater anyway. I think the same thing applies to having a baby (not that a baby is as low-stakes as a sweater, but you get the point I’m trying to make here!!) – a 1.68% discount just isn’t particularly compelling to people on the fence about parenthood. Isn’t that the group the government is really trying to reach?
Personally, I don’t get out my wallet for less than 20% off unless I was already going to buy something anyway. In this scenario, 20% off is $59,545 (or, roughly in the ballpark of the median annual income for women in the U.S., which was $53,352 in 2024.) I am who I am, so a full year’s salary on the house isn’t enough to get me to change my mind, but I bet at least one person reading made this face at that number:
Should we be surprised that the Trump administration is considering offensively small cash incentives to increase the birth rate? Hell no. There’s precedent for this in other countries, and, big shock! It hasn’t worked. But bribery is one of the obvious stops on the way to making having children compulsory. (Think China’s one child policy, but in reverse.) Coercion is present on the road to hell, too (the repeal of Roe, anyone?). I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.
It’s only May, and Trump has already said he’s proud to be known as the “fertilization president,” which, gag.
The behind-the-scenes discussions about family policy suggest Mr. Trump is quietly building an ambitious plan to promote the issue, even as he focuses much of his attention on higher-profile priorities such as federal cuts, tariffs and mass deportations. Project 2025, the policy blueprint that has forecast much of Mr. Trump’s agenda so far, discusses family issues before anything else, opening its first chapter with a promise to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.”
If you haven’t read the piece about all of this in The New York Times yet, I highly recommend it.
The funniest idea to increase the U.S. birthrate isn’t even the $5,000 baby bonus – it’s the educational programs for women to learn about their menstrual cycles so they can understand when exactly they’re able to conceive. This is hilarious, you guys. Specifically one word about it is funny – women. They think women are the ones who need more education, when there are grown ass men walking around in 2025 who don’t know where a tampon goes. Every pregnancy – wanted or not – starts with an ejaculation. Men are the ones who need more education on how a woman’s body works, as well as our minds.
(If you haven’t watched this video yet, it’s so worth it – the tampon comment is at 4:45)
Here’s what the New York Times wrote about this “educational” idea:
Leading medical associations have been skeptical of this approach, calling it “political” and not based in science.
“These ideologies have been around for a long time, and they’re always rooted in religion,” said Dr. Eve Feinberg, a medical director of fertility and reproductive medicine at Northwestern University. “It’s not actual medicine.”
But let me actually be complimentary for a moment. Many people in the Trump administration, including the president, want to expand access to IVF and make it more affordable, which I wholeheartedly agree with. No one can make you have IVF (yet…) – rather, this is a super innovative technology that specifically helps women who want children actually have them. This can only be a good thing for everyone. Every woman who wants a child badly enough to go through the IVF process should be able to do so safely and affordably. Why not make IVF free, instead of paying people to have kids? Let’s make sure every woman who wants a baby gets one! Doesn’t that feel like a better idea than gutting the CDC’s IVF team???????
Buckle the fuck up, y’all. We’re only three months into Trump’s second term and headlines about The Handmaid’s Tale are already back.
’s take on this article is the most delightful thing I read all week. Seriously, treat yourself. She’s my favorite combo of unhinged and hilarious:Honestly, “wait, what?” is the default state in America right now. At least, for those of us whose brains aren’t smooth as silk because we’ve maintained our intellect, knowledge of history and facts, reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, empathy—and souls3.
I’ve limited myself to only focusing on one area of fuckery here today. Because as my girl Kacey Musgraves says4, “Everyone knows someone who kills the buzz every time they open up their mouth” and we’ve all “seen enough, seen enough” by 9 AM most days.
BUT SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK??????????
“My Friends With Kids Don’t Respect My Dog” by Emily Gould for The Cut
Okay, let me be so real for a second. Part of the reason I finally launched Storytime™ (which will make its debut next Friday, probably) is because I am growing weary of Emily Gould’s biased responses whenever questions come up about issues between women who don’t have kids and their mom friends. I might write about this more in depth so sorry in advance for putting this here BUT the crux of this question is about a 35 year-old woman without kids feeling unseen and unheard by her friends with kids, and Emily Gould straight tells her to just suck it up and stop being annoying. Like… k????????? Read for yourself, the comments are unhinged, enjoy the descent into hell!
D. sympathized with you to some extent, but even she, who describes herself as “obsessed” with her dog, wanted me to set you straight on a couple of things. “Dog-son”? “The only ‘child’ I have”? Let’s not get it twisted.
You didn’t spend time and money on your friends’ new babies with the expectation of immediate reciprocity, or at least I hope you didn’t (ew). They forget your dog’s name and don’t offer treats because their brains are fried by three-hour shifts of sleep, and they don’t have dog treats to offer because their pockets are full of overpriced organic rice puffs at the moment.
Have a question you want answered by someone who won’t completely dismiss you? :)
“Why Am I So Tired?” by Olga Khazan for The Atlantic
Lest you think I am not empathetic to new mom exhaustion, I am! I think that’s the thing really, more empathy, for everyone. I think I’ve loved everything Olga has ever written, including this piece on the specific exhaustion of being a mother:
Maya Cash Carpenter, the mom who puts her keys in the fridge, has a 3-year-old, hosts a podcast, and also takes care of her ailing dad. She told me, “Even when I’m technically resting, I’m making mental checklists, responding to texts, planning content, or wondering if my toddler’s quiet time means peace or property damage. I’m quite literally a human browser with 47 tabs open at all times.” She said that her husband is tired in a “just finished a workout” way, while she’s tired in a “my soul needs to be wrung out like a sponge” way.
“Please forward to Jeff Bezos” by Bess Kalb for
I didn’t write about the Blue Origin flight two weeks ago and now I’m glad I didn’t because who needs anything else but this scathing piece of satire:
And also how DARE anyone call it a billion-dollar-Tower-of-Terror ride of capitalistic excess, when actually, it was good for science that they did this. Why? Because space is science, and the ladies went to space.
And I absolutely do not think it is craven pink-washing to frame the passengers as feminist heroes for participating in a billionaire’s deeply Freudian vanity project as he endorses and supports the president responsible for rolling back women’s rights by half a century.
Dystopia, but make it so fun??? I reread The Selection by Kiera Cass a week ago and let me just say, absolutely holds up. Delicious. Delightful. It’s The Bachelor with teenagers in a dystopian United States. Somebody please for the love of god make the TV show. The main character’s name is literally “America.” I personally guarantee a good time!!!!!
This week, Alex Cooper interviewed Phoebe Gates (yes, that Gates) and Sophia Kianni, co-hosts of The Burnouts podcast. In the above clip, Alex asks what the hardest double standard has been for them to navigate together, and Phoebe immediately responded “children.”
Phoebe: “We’ll have investors ask us all the time, well, what happens when you two go and have babies? I think it’s just the assumption that in your career, if you’re a woman and an investor puts in money and you’re going to be around for 10 years, then you’re going to have kids, and you’re going to fuck off.”
Sophie: “Someone literally said that to us. Like an investor on a call was like, so what’s going to happen to your company when you have kids? And we were like, what’s going to happen to your venture firm when you have kids? And he’s like, uh, why would that affect anything? And I was like, you answered your own question.”
I know I’ve said this before, but if I skip even a week of regular programming I’ve suddenly got a backlog of all this content other people are putting out about all of this shit that’s as long as a CVS receipt, welcome to 2025 I guess!!!
I’ll see you on Sunday for issue #1(!!) of the Sheila Heti Summer Slow Read. I’m chatting with one of my closest friends who read Motherhood at the same time I did, so get your headphones ready. In case you’re new here, comments are open to everyone on Fridays as long as things remain chill!
I immediately connected the 1.68% discount and I love this analogy because it just shows how downright ridiculous the whole "incentive" really is.
Also loved the whole Selection series, such good "chips" reads.
Thank you for dragging that Emily Gould piece!
I'm so bothered by the way certain people write about people without children who want emotionally reciprocity from their friends with kids in a callous, judgemental way when their stated objective is to try to make childfree people more empathethic. On what other matter does rudeness breed compassion?