May 29, 2025
It doesn’t take an avid researcher to see that more and more people have fewer children.
Financial restraints remain a significant reason Americans hesitate to start a family as population decrease becomes a primary concern.
That’s where the Child Tax Credit (CTC) comes into play.
In a recent Townhall op-ed, Students for Life of America (SFLA) Executive Vice President Tina Whittington shared her personal experience on raising four children, how CTC helped her and her husband financially, and how CTC expansion can help current families and couples looking to start a future.
“After four children in about six years, we had unexpected expenses like stays in the neonatal intensive care unit, procedures for a congenital condition, medicine for asthma, extra costs for having C-section surgeries, and so on,” wrote Whittington. “With each child, we tightened our budget. I became an expert at applying for any government programs to help make ends meet.”
Furthermore, Whittington makes the case that CTC in the early 2000s can also significantly impact couples in 2025, as long as Congress expands CTC to accommodate today’s economy.
Read an excerpt from the Townhall op-ed below:
“Right now, many American families face financial uncertainty, much like I did in the early 2000s. President Trump himself has said that Americans could feel “some pain” from the current trade war, although he considers the present economic rumblings a ‘medicine’ needed to fix the U.S. economy—a kind of storm before the calm.
If Congress doesn’t act soon, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Act that expanded the child credit from $1,000 per child to $2,000 will expire, cutting the support many need.
No one with even a modicum of economic awareness thinks the average family is sailing on smoother financial waters now than they were in 2017. In 2021 and 2022 alone, for example, inflation rates soared to 7% and 6.5%, respectively. The tax credits should be expanded, not restricted.
Consider that necessities such as diapers can cost $900 per year, with formula ringing up at $1,800 per year. Those two items alone swallow up the current $2,000 tax credit, and then some. The credit doesn’t even begin to touch medical appointments, clothing, childcare, education, and the like.
Voters support helping young families. A 2024 poll of voters conducted by KAConsulting LLC on behalf of SFLA and Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement (IPA) with Clapham Group found that seven in ten respondents supported an expanded Child Tax Credit.
I survived the housing crisis of 2008, and today’s young families can survive the tariff and economic strains of 2025 – as long as initiatives to extend and expand the Child Tax Credit are saved from Congress’s cutting floor,” Whittington continued.
Amid a new political era under President Donald Trump, it’s time for him and Congress to step up and “Make Birth Great Again.”
