The leaders, movers, and shakers of the New Right can't seem to make up their minds: ‘Do we love mothers, or do we punish them?’ A look at Project 2025’s 922-page policy blueprint for the next Republican presidential administration, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, reveals the juxtaposition of language promoting motherhood with language that conveys a real indifference to mothers’ wellbeing and a contempt for motherhood that exists outside of a particular ideal.
Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership refers to the choice to become a mother as an act of “heroism” (p. 6). However, the policies within the document (1) work in service of government-mandated motherhood in which mothers’ decisions, options, and resources are severely restricted; (2) are aimed toward forcing mothers into conformity with a rigid framework of motherhood based on Victorian Era sensibilities; and (3) effectually punishes motherhood that exists outside of the Victorian Era ideal. Hence, the few, lofty words extolling mothers and motherhood that are found in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership exist in sharp contradiction with its policy goals. The result is a noticeable incoherence, showcasing the incongruity between the New Right's nostalgic Victorian ideal and the real world, as it truly exists, with all its complexities.
The Victorian motherhood ideal
In the Victorian Era, “[t]he message [was] that motherhood was woman's highest achievement, albeit within marriage… Indeed, it was in this period that motherhood was idealized as the zenith of a woman's emotional and spiritual fulfillment,”1 and “a woman’s sacred duty and crowning glory.”2 As opposed to fathers, mothers were to be “a constant presence.”3
“At the same time… motherhood was becoming a social responsibility, a duty to the state and thus a full-time job, which could not easily be combined with paid work.”4 “[A] good mother offered nurturing, spiritual guidance, and early education to her children. The middle-class mother, in particular, fulfilled her major role in life by birthing and rearing successful children.”5 “Naturally, not all women fit the ideal,” including poor and unwed mothers.6
In England’s new industrial cities, “infant mortality rates were high. Responsibility for the appalling death rate amongst infants was roundly placed on the shoulders of mothers. Middle-class philanthropists, government inspectors and medical men united in their condemnation of the infant-care methods of poor women.”7 “In reality, the high infant mortality rate in the industrial cities was just as much to do with poor sanitation, dirty water, overcrowding and the pervasiveness of disease, but these were more difficult problems to solve. Yet the ideal of true motherhood demanded women be constantly present for their children - it implied a commitment to domesticity and was therefore seen as incompatible with the demands of the labour market. Working-class mothers were therefore more likely to be labelled irresponsible and neglectful, when in truth they were struggling to combine the demands of childcare and putting a meal on the table.”8
The motherhood ideal in the Victorian Era “was additionally limited to children born within wedlock. Unwed motherhood did not sanctify or redeem women; it instead marked them as ‘fallen.’ The birth of the child outside of marriage publicized a woman’s illicit sexuality and branded her child ‘illegitimate.’ In a practical sense, these births were financial disasters, as few women’s wages were sufficient to maintain a child. The major employer of young women was domestic service; keeping a child was impossible in service even had the wages been better. Thus, an unmarried working-class mother faced difficult choices… If her family could help her, she might live at home with her child… But if her family would not or could not assist her, she had limited options. She could give her baby to a nurse, paying a weekly sum, but most women could not afford weekly payments. She could go to the workhouse, where the conditions were, to say the least, unpleasant. She could try to get assistance from the father, though the amounts given were too small to support the child.”9 “Faced with bleak prospects, some women made the painful choice to give their children away, either to informal adopters or institutions.”10
Contextualizing “motherhood”
The New Right's motherhood ideal exists in the context of the imagination's nostalgia for a mythical past, one which can be described as a combination of eternal sunshine, financial stability and upward mobility, Victorian Era social and sexual sensibilities, and The Donna Reed Show. Hence, Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership seeks to effectuate this perfect, mythical past in the here and now, privileging a strict, patriarchal power structure within the family and wider society. As such, it's the job of policymakers to “restore the American family” (p. 4) to this mythical past.
In this idealized past, marriage is always “the ideal, natural family structure” (p. 489), regardless of individual circumstances, interpersonal violence, incarceration, the combustible incompatibility of partners, etc. Therefore, the policies put forth in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership are specifically designed to privilege the patriarchal family and to disadvantage families that exist outside of this framework, including through the use of the tax code (p. 4).
As for motherhood, the document explains that government policies must “affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father” (p. 481, emphasis added). This language of nurturing, like in the Victorian Era, implicitly idealizes motherhood, situating mothers within the confines of the home and assigned the primary duties of caring for and rearing children. (Men get to be the fun parents who play with the kids.)
Punishing motherhood
In several ways, the policies detailed in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership recreate some of the strains of the Victorian era on poor, working, and single mothers, all the while attempting to bottleneck women into an idealized motherhood framework.
🟩 Ending assistance for single mothers
For example, the Mandate for Leadership calls for replacing policies that provide assistance to single mothers with policies “encouraging” married motherhood (p. 316), leaving single mothers without assistance. When a government disadvantages single mothers, the government necessarily disadvantages their children as well.
This policy also disadvantages married mothers who may need to leave a marriage for the safety of themselves and that of their children, as marriage here functions as the gateway to assistance.
🟩 Re-purposing child support
The New Right's child support policy likewise disadvantages single mothers, as well as at-risk women and children— and anyone else whom a patriarchal government would force into or to remain in a relationship to which they would not voluntarily belong. Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership states, “Child support in the United States should strengthen marriage as the norm, restore broken homes, and encourage unmarried couples to commit to marriage” (p. 479). Because Project 2025 venerates marriage and its policies are designed to privilege marriage, no matter the costs to individuals, making sure a mother is married off to or remarries the father of her child - whether she wants to or not, whether it's healthy and safe for her be married to him or not - is key to the New Right's vision for “restoring[] the American family” to the greatness of its mythical past.
🟩 Redistributing other people's children
While stating that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them” (p. 489), Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership also prioritizes family separation and the redistribution of other people’s children. Instead of supporting policies that assist people who are experiencing unplanned pregnancies to keep and raise their resulting children, the document’s policy regarding the needs of financially insecure mothers-to-be is to encourage these women to give the children they’ve carried for nine months over to strangers for adoption (p. 6).
While adoption can be a blessing, in the context of unplanned pregnancy it is often “a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable.”11
As revealed in Gretchen Sisson’s Relinquished, “[t]he stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace an individual, private solution to a large-scale, social problem.”12 In this post-Roe world, the multi-million dollar “pro-life” adoption industry is increasingly “being revealed as an institution devoted to separating families and policing parenthood under the guise of feel-good family-building.”13 Sisson’s book is “rooted in a long-term study” and provides “analysis of hundreds of in-depth interviews with American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption.”14 It offers “a mind-bending analysis” of the “pro-life” adoption industry’s sketchy practices that are designed “to lure and persuade mothers” - most of whom would have preferred to keep their children, if only they’d had a little financial support - into “relinquishing[] their children with the failed promises of ‘open’ adoption.’”15 “The voices of these women are powerful and heartrending; they deserve to be heard.”16
🟩 Worsening the childcare crisis
In the same way that the New Right has failed to come to terms with the existence of single mothers and the dangers of domestic abuse, so too have they failed to come to grips with the existence of working mothers. The policies in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership regarding America's childcare crisis makes this abundantly clear.
Back in 1971, both houses of Congress “passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act on a bipartisan vote. Co-sponsored by Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale and Indiana Representative John Brademas, the act established a network of nationally funded, locally administered, comprehensive child care centers, which were to provide quality education, nutrition, and medical services.”17 The centers were to be open to all parents/families on a sliding scale basis. Congress even allocated a substantial amount of money to the program— “the equivalent of five times the 2012 federal budget for Head Start.”18 It was intended to be the first step toward universal childcare. (Back then, the Republican Party platform contained “a strong child care plank.”19)
To the astonishment of many, however, President Nixon vetoed the bill at the behest of Pat Buchanan, despite the fact that Nixon's administration had helped draft the legislation.20 Buchanan had been “itching to escalate the nascent culture war” surrounding the issue of women’s liberation.21 Radical conservative agitators, like Buchanan and James Buckley, had claimed that facilitating women’s entry into the workforce would “create pressure ‘to encourage women to put their families into institutions of communal living.’”22 By 1975, efforts to facilitate and support childcare had died out.23
The childcare policies proposed in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership is reminiscent the anti-women's liberation position of keeping mothers out of the workforce, continuing to fail working mothers, “at a time when a majority of Americans already live in child care deserts”24 and when young people cite the unaffordability of childcare as a reason for choosing not to have children.25
Instead of addressing America's childcare crisis such as by working towards universal, high quality, accredited daycare (such as NAEYC accredited programs), the Mandate for Leadership attacks childcare as dangerous and harmful to children, and proposes giving parents money “to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare” (p. 486). Because the labor of “nurturing” children most often falls on women, it is reasonable to assume that pressure to exit the workforce will fall predominantly on mothers. While some women would welcome having a little extra money in order to stay home with their young children, many others would wish to remain in the workforce, reluctant to forgo financial independence and stability. Childcare policy that is premised on the demonization of childcare as dangerous for children, while also making mothers’ participation in the workforce more and more difficult, further pigeon-holes women into the Victorian Era motherhood ideal and disadvantages those whose circumstances exist outside of the patriarchal, married family.
What's more, Project 2025’s childcare policy does not address the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds program (commonly referred to as welfare) state work requirements. “Federal TANF law requires states to meet “work participation rate” (WPR) targets or face a penalty. A state’s WPR measures the share of work-eligible participants who are engaged in work activities as defined in federal law. States must meet both an all-families rate and a higher two-parent families rate. For a state to meet its all-families rate, 50 percent of the families receiving TANF cash assistance must be engaged in a work activity for at least 30 hours a week (20 hours a week for single parents with children under age 6). States must also meet the two-parent families rate by having 90 percent of two-parent families engaged in work, generally for 35 hours per week.”26 If financially insecure, single mothers who receive temporary assistance through the TANF program are already required to work - and thus must necessarily utilize childcare - they are unlikely, under the New Right's childcare policy, to be eligible to stay home. As such, they are disadvantaged by the New Right's failure to address America's childcare crisis.
To make matters even worse for financially struggling mothers, “Project 2025 plans to completely eliminate Head Start (p. 482), a federally funded child care program that has served nearly 40 million children and provides vital support to American families experiencing poverty. Nixing Head Start would create painful and, in some cases, unbearable increases in the cost of child care for countless Americans. Worse still, the repercussions would be disproportionately felt by some of the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including Latino and rural communities.”27
“Moreover, children would lose access to the emotional, social, health, nutritional, and educational supports necessary to succeed once they enter kindergarten.”28
“Significantly cutting child care supply will have ripple effects across the entire economy. Roughly 68 percent of children under age 6 in the United States have all available parents in the workforce, meaning access to child care is both critical for child well-being and the economy. Lack of access to reliable and affordable infant and toddler care currently costs the U.S. economy $122 billion every year due to lost earnings, productivity, and tax revenue. This would only increase with the elimination of the Head Start program.”29
🟩 Increasing reproductive burdens
A mother’s ability to plan when and if to have another child is critical to her financial stability. However, Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership seeks to restrict mothers’ access to high-quality methods of birth control. Instead, the policy document advocates for fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs) of family planning (p. 455), which lack the same high-quality research evidence as modern hormonal contraceptives and the success rate depends on consistent, dedicated adherence from both sexual partners.30
Fertility awareness-based methods of preventing pregnancy are often a luxury for working mothers, because they require extra time each day, for example, to feel one’s cervical mucus and chart its consistency, take and chart one’s temperature, etc. While FABMs may be the right choice for some people, they’re not right for others.
“FABMS are unforgiving of incorrect or inconsistent use, leading many to report higher typical-use pregnancy rates than most other methods, such as provider-dependent methods. While FABMS produce no physical side effects, they offer no protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Some methods may also require an investment of time working with an experienced instructor. Certain conditions and life stages that increase the likelihood of irregular/less predictable cycles may make FABMS more difficult to use, and those patients require more extensive counseling and follow-up.”31 This includes:
Recent childbirth32
Current breast/chestfeeding33
Recent menarche34
Anovulatory cycling as with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)35
Recent discontinuation of hormonal contraceptive methods36
Approaching menopause37
“FABMS are also not recommended for persons who are unable to abstain or use other contraceptive methods during the fertile days or who are unable to negotiate the timing of intercourse.”38
Additionally, the Mandate for Leadership would limit where mothers can receive reproductive health care, and eliminate local access to low-cost community health centers (pps. 471-472). Mothers are economically, socially, and phisically disadvantaged when a patriarchal government limits their available options for preventing pregnancy and eliminates their access to affordable reproductive healthcare.
🟩 Disabling mothers
Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership also punishes pregnant mothers experiencing serious pregnancy complications and miscarriages (pps. 455, 457-459, 473-474). The New Right’s elevation of embryonic and fetal life over and above the health and life of mothers is codified in the policy document. This includes removing federal EMTALA protections for mothers’ lives and health, allowing states to ban emergency, life-saving abortions. The New Right’s fetish for sacrificing women and their sadistic urge to leave women permanently disabled by denying them necessary healthcare could not be more evident.
Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership is a recipe for woes. In promulgating policies which economically, socially, and physically disadvantage mothers - from increasing pressure to leave the workforce to watching them die in hospital emergency rooms, to Redistributing their children to strangers - the New Right punishes mothers, and makes motherhood less and less attractive to younger generations. Every mom and mom-to-be deserves better.
Abrams, L. (n.d.). History - ideals of womanhood in Victorian Britain. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_07.shtml#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20it%20was%20in%20this,be%20combined%20with%20paid%20work
Frost, G. (2014). “Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”: Illegitimacy, Motherhood, and the London Foundling Hospital, 1860-1930. CAIRN. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2014-1-page-45.htm#:~:text=1The%20Victorian%20view,early%20education%20to%20her%20children
Frost, G. (2014). “Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”: Illegitimacy, Motherhood, and the London Foundling Hospital, 1860-1930. CAIRN. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2014-1-page-45.htm#:~:text=1The%20Victorian%20view,early%20education%20to%20her%20children
Abrams, L. (n.d.). History - ideals of womanhood in Victorian Britain. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_07.shtml#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20it%20was%20in%20this,be%20combined%20with%20paid%20work
Frost, G. (2014). “Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”: Illegitimacy, Motherhood, and the London Foundling Hospital, 1860-1930. CAIRN. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2014-1-page-45.htm#:~:text=1The%20Victorian%20view,early%20education%20to%20her%20children
Frost, G. (2014). “Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”: Illegitimacy, Motherhood, and the London Foundling Hospital, 1860-1930. CAIRN. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2014-1-page-45.htm#:~:text=1The%20Victorian%20view,early%20education%20to%20her%20children
Abrams, L. (n.d.). History - ideals of womanhood in Victorian Britain. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_07.shtml#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20it%20was%20in%20this,be%20combined%20with%20paid%20work
Abrams, L. (n.d.). History - ideals of womanhood in Victorian Britain. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_07.shtml#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20it%20was%20in%20this,be%20combined%20with%20paid%20work
Frost, G. (2014). “Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”: Illegitimacy, Motherhood, and the London Foundling Hospital, 1860-1930. CAIRN. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2014-1-page-45.htm#:~:text=1The%20Victorian%20view,early%20education%20to%20her%20children
Frost, G. (2014). “Your Mother Has Never Forgotten You”: Illegitimacy, Motherhood, and the London Foundling Hospital, 1860-1930. CAIRN. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2014-1-page-45.htm#:~:text=1The%20Victorian%20view,early%20education%20to%20her%20children
The politics of adoption and the privilege of American motherhood. Relinquished. (n.d.). https://www.relinquishedbook.com/
Gretchen Sisson — Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood - with Nicole Chung — at Conn Ave. Politics and Prose. (2024, March 3). https://www.politics-prose.com/gretchen-sisson
Gretchen Sisson — Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood - with Nicole Chung — at Conn Ave. Politics and Prose. (2024, March 3). https://www.politics-prose.com/gretchen-sisson
Gretchen Sisson — Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood - with Nicole Chung — at Conn Ave. Politics and Prose. (2024, March 3). https://www.politics-prose.com/gretchen-sisson
Meyer, P. K. (2024, April 10). I’d be an adoptee teen mom all over again. Ms. Magazine. https://msmagazine.com/2024/04/09/adoption-teen-mom-mother-relinquished/
Gretchen Sisson — Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood - with Nicole Chung — at Conn Ave. Politics and Prose. (2024, March 3). https://www.politics-prose.com/gretchen-sisson
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Cohen, N. L. (2021, May 11). The National Day-care law that wasn’t. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/113009/child-care-america-was-very-close-universal-day-care
Peeks, C. (2024, July 18). Project 2025 would eliminate head start, severely restricting access to child care in rural America. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025-would-eliminate-head-start-severely-restricting-access-to-child-care-in-rural-america/
El Issa, E. (2024, February 29). Why don’t some millennials want kids? they say it’s too expensive. NerdWallet. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/why-dont-some-millennials-want-kids-they-say-its-too-expensive
Policy basics: Temporary assistance for needy families. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (n.d.). https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/policy-basics-an-introduction-to-tanf
Ragland, W., DeMio, P. S., Ombres, D., & Turner, D. (2024, July 8). Release: Child care deserts would expand under Project 2025’s plan to eliminate head start, cap analysis finds. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/press/release-child-care-deserts-would-expand-under-project-2025s-plan-to-eliminate-head-start-cap-analysis-finds/
Ragland, W., DeMio, P. S., Ombres, D., & Turner, D. (2024, July 8). Release: Child care deserts would expand under Project 2025’s plan to eliminate head start, cap analysis finds. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/press/release-child-care-deserts-would-expand-under-project-2025s-plan-to-eliminate-head-start-cap-analysis-finds/
Peeks, C. (2024, July 18). Project 2025 would eliminate head start, severely restricting access to child care in rural America. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025-would-eliminate-head-start-severely-restricting-access-to-child-care-in-rural-america/
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 497–499). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Urruria, R. P., & Polis, C. B. (2025). Fertility Awareness-based methods. In Contraceptive Technology (22nd ed., pp. 502). essay, Jones & Bartlett Learning.
This is a Fascist GOP manifesto. Getting married and having children will be a highly unappealing option for yes younger people and those that might have desired to remarry. Some people cannot have children due to infertility and other major health issues that affect both men and women. Others simply don’t desire to have children. Many people are concerned with the economics of raising children. For those who want to be parents I give them my sincerest blessings and the same for those who are pumping their brakes about their decision. Project 2025 is a fascists playbook. This has been in the works for a while and organized by a far right organization. If our 2024 election goes the wrong way then we can expect quite a bit of it to be implemented.