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As Ive talked this over with friends and colleagues, Ive found that there is quite a bit of support for the idea of a child allowance. At a gut level, people understand that its gotten objectively harder for the average person to afford children without working so much to make ends meet that they dont have the time or energy to spend the time with their kids that they need. The general sentiment is that the family is a haven in a heartless world and we should support anything that makes it easier for families to thrive.

Ive observed two things in these discussions that also map directly onto the broader fault lines in right-of-center politics. The younger people Ive spoken to are more likely to support a child allowance than the older. The dividing line seems to be around age 50, with support increasing among younger people, while opposition increases in frequency and vehemence with age. The other is that people who work in politics are more likely to oppose this idea, probably because they are the ones most invested in an ideological outlook and with the most institutional incentives to toe the line.

A cynic might reply that of course people in their 20s, 30s and 40s would be more likely to support this plan; after all, theyre the ones most likely to have kids and receive the cash. There is something to that, but I dont think this is a case of raw self-interest driving people to get their hands on some free money. Whats really going on is that these people are in a very different place financially than Generation X and especially baby boomers when they were raising young children. Millennials, many of whom are now in their 30s, own a share of national wealth that is roughly one-quarter what the boomers owned at the same age and are well below where Gen X was, too.

Theyre the ones feeling the brunt of the brutal slowdown in real wage growth that started in the 1970s, of the steep rise in the cost of education, of the financialization and globalization of the economy that have all made it harder to start a family and raise children. These private conversations have been instructive. One conservative friend in her late 20s, upon hearing about the Biden plan, told me, What the heck, I guess Im a Democrat now. She was joking about switching parties, but not about her support for the child allowance. Other young Republicans might go the additional step, which would spell doom for Republicans who are already struggling with younger people. My friend is a frequent critic of Mitt Romney, but she likes his plan a lot.

Elected Republicans who reflexively oppose a child allowance may need to catch up with their voters and with economic reality on this. Some might be getting the message. Another friend, who spent years working closely with Jack Kemp and might have been expected to oppose the idea for any number of reasons, told me he strongly supports a child allowance. He essentially waved off the sorts of concerns raised by Mr. Rubio and Mr. Lee as being trifles compared with the importance of supporting family formation and the stability that comes with it.

The long-term trend of demotherization, as social scientists gracelessly put it, is not good for children or the many women who report that they would prefer to be at home with their children, especially when they are young. Whats worse, both the earned-income tax credit and temporary assistance for needy families reinforce the problem, because they are means tested and linked to the mother working outside of the home. Scott Winship of the American Enterprise Institute explicitly worries that a child allowance would create the possibility that single mothers could afford not to work.

Strangely the concern that mothers whether single or married could afford not to work seems to be a fetish for many Republicans who are otherwise pro-family, at least in their statements. Whats incongruous about the Lee and Rubio statement is that when they say that being pro-family is being pro-work, they are saying, in effect, that only wage-work outside the home counts as real work. Thats false and inhumane. Raising children is in fact the most essential work there is. Kids need their parents. Its hard and time-consuming, but ultimately the most satisfying thing that most people do. Conservatives should believe in parents raising their own children rather than outsourcing it.

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Opinion | There Is a Generational Divide Among Republicans - The New York Times