Conservatives' 1776-inspired report faces fierce criticism

The top conservative think tank in the United States has released a new policy paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” that a New York Times columnist has panned.

Opinion writer Jessica Grose wrote that the Heritage Foundation authors went all the way back to 1776 for their "inspiration." They are calling their report "A Foundation for the Next 250 Years."

“In understanding their crowning achievement, Americans must recognize that the founding fathers were, quite literally, fathers," the report stated. "Fifty-four of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence married and had a total of 337 children among them — an average of six each.”

She commented, "I wondered: Are they counting the six children Thomas Jefferson had with Sally Hemings — whom he enslaved and who could not legally refuse unwanted sex — or not? What kind of example is that supposed to set?"

Grose continued, explaining, "That’s just the opening salvo of this confused, retrograde report, which leaves out a lot of important details from its rose-colored history of marriage and family in the United States."

She called the report "a curious set of guidelines for the future, since it seems mired in culture war battles from the 20th century, unable to face the past 60 years of change."

The Heritage Foundation is the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025, which, it could be argued, is focused on returning America to far more conservative and traditional social, cultural, and institutional beliefs.

Grose noted that Heritage "seems to want to take a time machine back to when women were financially dependent on men and gay marriage was not legal."

She also noted the discrepancies in Heritage's thesis.

"The report’s authors know they can’t tell all women to be stay-at-home mothers (returning the country to 1960s employment levels for women) because that would contradict their other goal, to dismantle the welfare state and put even more work conditions on parents receiving government aid," she wrote, noting that "the bulk of the paper is about ways to whittle down government support for anybody who isn’t part of a traditional married family, ideally with a male breadwinner."

Grose says that on the one hand, "I always marvel at how we agree on some of the problems American families face," yet on the other, can "have completely different solutions."

Other discrepancies Grose pointed to include a poll showing that young male Trump voters see having children as their top measure of success, and marriage as their fourth.

"Instead of looking at these stats and thinking that maybe there’s a deeper problem if only conservative men are bullish about having children," she wrote, "the authors look at the stats and think: If our government only pushed religion and traditional marriage harder legally and culturally, everyone else would fall in line."

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