Trump Is Reaching Into Parents' Lives. Can Democrats Capitalize?

New York Times

11-05-2025

The prices of strollers and car seats are skyrocketing as companies race to adjust to President Trump's tariff policies. Federal support for a major campaign to promote safe infant sleep habits appears to have been cut. Measles outbreaks are terrifying parents of young children, even as the nation's health secretary undermines vaccines.
The Trump administration's policies are reaching ever deeper into the lives of American families, transforming routine and apolitical parts of some parents' days — trips to the pediatrician, conversations at swim classes, chatter on online baby gear forums — into scenes of anxiety and anger.
For a Democratic Party still searching for its strongest message amid the upheavals of the second Trump term, the politics of parenting offer a telling test case: Can Democrats persuade voters that this White House is making their lives harder?
'I've never heard this level of fear,' said former Representative Colin Allred, a Texas Democrat mulling a second Senate bid in his state, which has a significant measles outbreak. He said his nonpolitical friends — people who 'just want to send their kids to school and watch the Cowboys play' — were 'calling me and asking, like, 'What the hell is going on?'
There are no greater motivators in politics than anger and fear. But in recent years, Republicans have been far more successful than Democrats at tapping into parents' raw emotions.
In 2021, they rode waves of concern about pandemic-era education to victory in the Virginia governor's race. Last year, Democrats were caught off guard as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the leader of the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement and now the health secretary, helped Mr. Trump win over parents worried about food additives and swayed by false information on vaccines.
And while Joseph R. Biden Jr. won parents with children under the age of 18 in 2020, Mr. Trump captured that demographic in November, exit polls showed. Many Republicans have declared that they are the 'party of parents.'
So far, the Democratic response has been scattershot, and there is little evidence of an organized anti-MAHA movement.
But interviews with nearly 40 parents, politicians and pediatricians suggest that there is an opening for candidates who can channel parents' fury and fears — if they can connect with those voters.
Trinity Chisholm, 23, a nursing student and a Democrat who was at the library last week with her 1-year-old in Chester, Va., outside Richmond, said that she was worried about measles outbreaks — and that the administration's vaccine approach was 'not based in science.'
'It just feels like it's preying on parents' insecurities and fears,' she said.
State Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes of Georgia, a Democrat who has a baby, said that in Facebook parent groups, 'people are legitimately freaking out.'
When 'you are shutting down safe-to-sleep campaigns, and you are undermining the trust in our vaccination programs, this is a cause for grave concern,' she said. 'These are issues that will 100 percent motivate people.'
'This is a slippery slope'
As the nation confronts one of the worst measles outbreaks in a generation, Representative Brittany Pettersen, a Colorado Democrat who gave birth in January, is making the same calculations as many other parents of infants: how to protect babies who are too young for a measles vaccine.
'I'm hopeful that parents will start mobilizing, and moms are going to start mobilizing, because it's very scary,' she said. She suggested it was 'unfathomable' that someone like Mr. Kennedy could be guiding public health policy.
Certainly, the large outbreak in the Southwest began in a Mennonite community, where there has long been skepticism of the medical system. And Mr. Kennedy, who has spent years spreading doubts about vaccines, has said recently that inoculations are the best way to avoid spreading measles.
But he has also downplayed the seriousness of measles infections, promoted unproven treatments that may be making children more sick and taken many other actions that experts see as dangerously damaging to public confidence in vaccines, like encouraging parents to 'do your own research' before vaccinating their infants.
As six of her seven children romped around a playground in Warrington, Pa., Katrina Britton, 39, who does not inoculate her kids, said that recommendation resonated.
'Vaccinations should definitely be a personal choice that every parent is educated about,' she said, praising Mr. Kennedy's efforts to curtail food dyes and seed oils and to encourage parents to make their own determinations on vaccinations.
To many in the scientific and medical communities as well as his Democratic critics, Mr. Kennedy is sowing doubt about lifesaving preventative medicine.
'The culpability is on the president who nominated R.F.K. Jr., it's on R.F.K. Jr. himself, and it is on every single senator who voted to confirm,' said Representative Kim Schrier, a Washington Democrat and a pediatrician, calling Mr. Kennedy 'anti-science' and 'anti-vaccine.'
Mr. Kennedy, who has promoted debunked claims about ties between vaccines and autism, has also stoked privacy concerns for some parents.
'That's another terrifying piece,' said Ebony Turner, a lawyer and former Democratic candidate for local office whose son has Down syndrome. Speaking from her office in Mansfield, Texas, she added, 'This is a slippery slope.'
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that 'Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine — he is pro-safety, pro-transparency and pro-accountability.'
'Claims that Secretary Kennedy is spreading misinformation or undermining vaccine confidence are flat-out false,' he said. 'Secretary Kennedy's leadership is grounded in a relentless commitment to improving the health of our nation — especially for children.'
Mr. Kennedy has a devoted following. Wellness influencers and other 'MAHA moms' promote him in a social media ecosystem that Democrats and MAHA critics are struggling to match.
'Democrats are absolutely awful at communication,' said Jessica Knurick, a dietitian with a Ph.D. in nutrition science who said she used her substantial online presence to try to 'break through with accurate information, no matter what side it's coming from politically.'
She added, 'In the science and medical space, we have a messaging problem.'
In interviews around the country, numerous voters said they had not closely followed Mr. Kennedy's comments. Others saw no contradiction in both supporting Mr. Trump's administration and embracing vaccines — a perspective many doctors welcome as they stress that public health issues should not be political.
But voters' ability to hold both views suggests that concerns about the Trump administration's stewardship of public health are not guaranteed to prompt electoral backlash.
'Something that Democrats need to be doing a better job at is how we can elevate issues and highlight individual stories and make it real for people,' Ms. Pettersen said.
Some Democrats argue that their efforts to sound alarm bells on public health are beginning to work, with congressional Republicans agonizing over their push to cut Medicaid spending.
'Tell your billionaire friends they can only have one yacht'
Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic state senator in Michigan running for U.S. Senate, was at her 4-year-old's swim class recently, talking with a fellow mom who had one child.
'I asked if she was considering having another one, and she said, 'Not if things keep up like this,'' Ms. McMorrow said in an interview, referring to rising child-related costs. 'There's a lot of anxiety for parents.'
Mr. Trump's allies hope that parents reach different conclusions. The White House has heard out ideas for persuading Americans to have more children; one proposal is a $5,000 'baby bonus.' Mr. Trump also signed an executive order reaffirming his commitment to lowering the costs of in vitro fertilization.
'President Trump has always prioritized the well-being of our nation's families,' Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
He pointed to efforts to review baby formula and said Mr. Trump's economic agenda was aimed at 'rebuilding communities that have been hollowed out by decades of 'free' trade deals so that working-class families can once again thrive.'
But Mr. Trump has acknowledged that his tariff policies may have consequences even for kids.
'Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,' he said recently.
To Democrats, it was an outrageous statement, and an opening to cast the administration as out of touch.
'Parents are just supposed to sit here and take parenting advice from President Trump,' said Representative Hillary Scholten, a Michigan Democrat, incredulously. 'When it comes to, you know, the tax code, parents are going to be telling him, 'Tell your billionaire friends they can only have one yacht.''
Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who is expecting a third child in June, has called Mr. Trump's tariffs a 'baby tax' and declared that the administration is 'anti-baby,' given the rising costs of strollers and car seats. He expressed confidence that voters would respond.
'They're going to get it,' he said. 'They're going to understand that: 'Last year, my cousin, you know, had a baby, and things weren't as expensive. And now they are expensive.''
In an interview, Mr. Gallego showed another way that the subject of children could be politically useful: to deflect questions about a presidential campaign.
Asked if anything about a 2028 bid might appeal to him, Mr. Gallego, who has been amping up his national profile, replied, 'By that point, I'd have three little babies, and so focusing on being a good dad and a good senator is the only thing that's appealing to me right now.'