Trump's ‘return to office' crusade smothers its pronatalist promise
The White House trumpets a 'baby bonus' — $5,000 wired days after delivery — to reverse America's record-low 1.6 fertility rate, documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics Reports. In the same breath, it orders every federal employee back to the office five days a week. But Stanford's new 'Working from Home in 2025' survey of 16,422 professionals upends that logic: women with children desire 2.66 remote days each week, higher than any other demographic.
The administration vows to grow families while vaporizing the flexibility that makes new children feasible, creating a collision that risks empty cribs and hollow offices alike.
Time rules parenthood. The average American commute consumes 55 minutes round-trip, meaning a traditional five-day schedule eats up almost another five hours of free time each week. Those hours fuel bedtime routines, homework patrol and marriage maintenance; without them, parental stress spikes.
Stanford's survey shows parents steer toward hybrid work precisely because several home days help restore that bandwidth. Parents still collaborate on site yet dodge traffic's cortisol surge. The federal badge doctrine yanks that option, forcing caregivers back into rush-hour gridlock and shredding the very capacity the 'baby bonus' seeks to reward. The White House defends the order as a downtown-revitalization plan, yet empty playgrounds undermine long-term urban vitality far more than shuttered salad bars.
The response has been swift — over 260,000 civil-service resignations, buyouts or early retirements since the mandate, a wave led by mid-career women. These departures bleed institutional knowledge, spike contractor costs and prove that rigid schedules push out precisely the workers the baby-bonus scheme aims to empower.
Direct payments headline well, yet history shows money alone seldom moves fertility. France, Hungary and South Korea all dangled cash but saw sustained birth-rate gains only after they paired subsidies with affordable childcare and generous leave. We've seen the same skepticism here, with women calling the $5,000 proposal 'meager' without schedule support.
In fact, policymakers still debate whether a bonus would move the needle at all. Child-care tuition already tops mortgage payments in many metro areas, and the gas, parking and wardrobe costs tied to full-time commutes burn up the bonus long before a first birthday.
Rigid attendance therefore turns the 'baby bonus' into a consolation prize for exhaustion.
The persistent declines in births stem from soaring childcare costs, student debt and delayed milestones such as homeownership — all problems amplified by longer daily commutes. When the administration mandates five badge scans a week, it inflates every hidden parenting expense the subsidy intends to ease. The result is policy whiplash: a check in one envelope, a time audit in the next.
The Stanford survey reinforces that economic calculus: women with children value schedule control more than any other employment perk, ranking it higher than pay or promotion prospects. Force them back, and many abandon growth plans — at work and at home. The administration's own ranks testify. Treasury's internal return-to-office guidance, issued in February, acknowledges 'heightened retention risk' among caregivers, yet it still enforces five days on-site. Pronatalism that ignores workplace physics turns into press-release theater.
One pivot resolves the clash: Replace the blanket five-day decree with a disciplined three-day anchor model for roles that do not handle classified hardware or wet-lab equipment.
Stanford's Steven Davis and Nicholas Bloom show firms keep productivity steady — or lift it — under such hybrid rules, while recruitment costs fall because talent pools widen geographically. Eighty percent of Fortune 500 companies now run some version of this model, proof that flexibility and performance coexist. Hybrid schedules also cut vehicle miles, handing the administration an unwritten climate victory without another regulation, as remote-work research from Hoover Institution scholars confirms.
Congress can hard-wire the alignment. Tie the enlarged Child Tax Credit now under debate to employer certification of at least two voluntary home days per week, nudging private firms toward family-friendly norms. House negotiators already weigh credit expansion as part of a broader pronatalist push. Add lease subsidies for offices that include on-site childcare and stroller storage, and the commute becomes a support node, not a hurdle.
Stanford's evidence stands clear: caregivers who will deliver tomorrow's taxpayers want 2.66 remote days each week, yet the badge order throttles that desire and drains the very talent the government hopes to retain. Align workplace structure with family aspirations, and the baby bonus transforms from political gimmick to demographic catalyst. Ignore the contradiction, and America exchanges rattles for resignation letters — a trade no nation can afford.
Flexibility, not fiat, is the linchpin that lets families, careers and the country thrive together.
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., serves as the CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and authored the best-seller Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
24 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
New paper sheds light on experience of Black prisoners in infamous Stateville prison malaria experiments
Much has been said and written over the years about controversial malaria research conducted on inmates at Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary starting in the 1940s. But at least one part of that story has been largely ignored until now: the role of Black prisoners in that research, which helped lead to the modern practice of using genetic testing to understand how individual patients will react to certain medications, according to the authors of a newly published paper out of the University of Utah. 'We want to highlight the stories of Black prisoners that participated in this prison research in the 1950s onward and give them their due,' said Hannah Allen, a medical ethicist and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and first author of the paper, which was published as an opinion piece Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 'They haven't been properly acknowledged in the past, and their participation in these studies was really foundational in launching the field of pharmacogenetics and, later on, precision medicine,' said Allen, who recently completed her doctorate at the University of Utah. Starting in the 1940s, researchers infected inmates at the Joliet-area prison with malaria to test the effectiveness of drugs to treat the illness as part of a U.S. military-funded effort to protect American troops overseas, according to the paper. A University of Chicago doctor was the principal investigator. The inmates consented to being part of the studies and were paid for their participation. At first, the research was greeted with enthusiasm. In 1945, Life magazine ran a spread about it, featuring a photo of a Stateville inmate with cups containing malaria-carrying mosquitoes pressed against his bare chest. The first line of the story reads, 'In three U.S. penitentiaries men who have been imprisoned as enemies of society are now helping science fight another enemy of society.' But as the years passed, attitudes began to shift. Questions arose about whether inmates could truly, freely consent to participate in medical experiments or whether they felt coerced into them because of their often dire circumstances. At the Nuremberg trials, defense attorneys for Nazi doctors introduced text and images from the Life article about Stateville prison, though an Illinois physician argued at the trials that the prisoners in Stateville consented to being part of medical research whereas Nazi prisoners did not, according to the JAMA paper. In the mid-1970s, news broke about a study at Tuskegee, in which Black men with syphilis went untreated for years — news that raised awareness of ethical problems in medical research. News outlets also began publishing more stories about prison research, according to the JAMA article. The Chicago Tribune published an article in 1973, in which an inmate participating in the Stateville malaria research said: 'I've been coerced into the project — for the money. Being here has nothing to do with 'doing good for mankind' … I didn't want to keep taking money from my family.' The experiments at Stateville came to a halt in the 1970s. A number of protections and regulations are now in place when it comes to research involving prisoners. Since the 1970s, the Stateville research has often been discussed and analyzed but little attention has been paid to its Black participants, said James Tabery, a medical ethicist and philosophy professor at the University of Utah who led the new research, which was funded by the federal National Institutes of Health. For a time, Black prisoners were excluded from the studies because of a myth that Black people were immune to malaria, Tabery said. Later on, once scientists had pinpointed the drug primaquine as an effective medication for malaria, they turned their attention to the question of why 5% to 10% of Black men experienced a violent reaction to the drug, according to the paper. Ultimately, the scientists were successful, finding that the adverse reaction was related to a specific genetic deficiency. 'There are people all over Chicago today that are getting tested, that clinicians are recommending they get a genetic test before they get prescribed a drug because they want to make sure that their patient isn't going to have an adverse reaction to the drug,' Tabery said. 'It's really sort of powerful and interesting that you can trace that approach to doing good clinical medicine right back to this particular moment and place and population.' But Tabery and Allen also found that the Black prisoners were not treated the same as the white prisoners who participated in research at Stateville. For one, they weren't paid as much as the white prisoners, the rationale being that the white prisoners were infected with malaria, whereas the Black prisoners were given the drug but not infected with the disease — though some of the Black prisoners got very ill after taking the medication, according to the paper. Also, researchers didn't protect the Black participants' privacy as well as they did for other participants. They published certain identifying information about the Black participants, such as initials, ages, heights and weights, whereas participants in the previous research were represented with case numbers, according to the paper. Researchers also recruited the Black prisoners' family members for the study, which they didn't do with earlier participants, according to the paper. 'You see them just doing things with the Black prisoners that they're not doing with the white prisoners,' Tabery said. Also, though scientists made an important discovery through the research on Black prisoners, the episode also highlights the difficulty that can occur in translating discoveries into real life help for patients. Though the World Health Organization now recommends genetic testing to protect people who are sensitive to antimalarials, many of the people who would benefit most from such testing still don't receive it because of financial barriers, supply chain issues and a lack of training, according to the paper. 'What we found is when you sort of shift to what was happening to the Black prisoners, these other lessons you hadn't thought of as being derivable from Stateville suddenly do become apparent,' Tabery said.
25 minutes ago
Members of the Fulbright scholarship board resign, accusing Trump of meddling
All 12 members of the board overseeing the prestigious Fulbright scholarships on Wednesday resigned in protest of what they call the Trump administration's meddling with the selection of award recipients, according to a statement. A statement published online by the board members said the administration usurped the board's authority by denying awards to 'a substantial number of people' who already had been chosen. Another 1,200 award recipients who were already approved to come to the U.S. are undergoing an unauthorized review process that could lead to their rejection, the board members said. 'To continue to serve after the Administration has consistently ignored the Board's request that they follow the law would risk legitimizing actions we believe are unlawful and damage the integrity of this storied program and America's credibility abroad,' the statement reads. Congress established the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago to promote international exchange and American diplomacy. The highly selective program awards about 9,000 scholarships annually in the U.S. and in more than 160 other countries to students, scholars, and professionals in a range of fields. A message seeking comment was left with the State Department, which runs the scholarship program. The resignations were first reported by The New York Times. The intervention from the Trump administration undermined the program's merit-based selection process and its insulation from political influence, the board members wrote. 'We believe these actions not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute,' the statement said. 'It is our sincere hope that Congress, the courts, and future Fulbright Boards will prevent the administration's efforts to degrade, dismantle, or even eliminate one of our nation's most respected and valuable programs.' Award recipients are selected in a yearlong process by nonpartisan staff at the State Department. The recipients who had their awards canceled are in fields including biology, engineering, medical sciences, and history, the board members said. The announcement comes as the Trump administration ratchets up scrutiny of international students on several fronts. The administration has expanded the grounds for revoking foreign students' legal status, and recently paused scheduling of new interviews for student visas as it increases vetting of their social media activity. The government also has moved to block foreign students from attending Harvard as it pressures the Ivy League school to adopt a series of reforms. ___ standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
CDC backtracks on layoffs, rehires more than 400 people
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reinstating more than 400 people who had received layoff notices, according to an email from CDC leadership to employees seen by POLITICO. The rehiring, announced internally today, marks the largest number of employees that the agency has asked back to date. Around half of those employees are in the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention, and around a third are in the National Center for Environmental Health. Other divisions seeing reinstatements include the National Center for Health Statistics, Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, Office of Human Resources, Global Health Center, Office of Acquisition Services and Office of Communications. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He told Fox News, which first reported the news: 'The Trump Administration is committed to protecting essential services — whether it's supporting coal miners and firefighters through [the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health], safeguarding public health through lead prevention, or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases.' — Key context: In April, roughly 2,400 CDC employees received termination notices amid a massive reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services. But the agency has periodically rehired staff over the past few months.
