Heritage Foundation publishes road map to women’s total subjugation
Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 47, No. 3, June-July 2026
By Margaret Viggiani
The latest offering from the Heritage Foundation could have been written in Hitler’s Germany. “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years” makes a grotesque argument for using political, religious, economic and cultural pressure to force women back into the home, uneducated and pregnant because “the family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage … is its cornerstone.”
The Heritage Foundation is a well-funded hard-right think tank that promotes anti-woman, anti-labor, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+ and nationalist policies.
This latest offering is neo-con propaganda with a legislative agenda — much like Project 2025. It will also likely be adopted by Congressional sleazebags as was the case with the previous reactionary road map.
The linchpin of “Saving America” is that women need to marry early and have lots of babies in order to turn around the “decline in stable married households headed by a father and mother.” Two biological parents are the only real family group they assert. The authors bemoan the horror of 25% of children in the U.S. living in single-parent households.
Their solution to the shrinking U.S. population and aging workforce is to coerce women into having more kids in order to replenish the workforce. This ignores the fact that immigration policies backed by the Heritage Foundation are destroying families and denying jobs to willing workers and taxpayers. Opening the borders would go a long way to solve these problems.
Instead they propose financial enticements like a Family and Marriage (FAM) tax credit to encourage married couples to have more children. The credit would take money from single-parent households, leaving low-income women of color and marginalized families even more on the edge.
Heritage states that most welfare legislation has promoted single parenthood and should be reworked. They make an exception for Bill Clinton’s devastating 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which imposed punitive work requirements that stopped falling marriage rates of moms receiving government subsidies. Undoubtedly, the inability to survive without a partner did push many women into marriage or prevent them from leaving abusive situations.
Heritage blames the feminist movement for access to abortion, contraceptives, no-fault divorce, and queer marriage. They also find that women who work and get an education are part of the problem. The authors insist there are only two sexes, discounting scientific reality and effectively erasing trans and non-binary people.
The foundation believes that institutions should push women into marrying early, staying married and having more kids. “One of the most important things that religious institutions can do today to rebuild the family home is to use their religious freedom to preach and affirm God’s design for the human body, sex, marriage, and the family.” It’s chilling.
The paper has more outrages than can be distilled here. It’s a reminder that patriarchy is indeed the foundation of capitalist exploitation. To preserve that system, the far-right intends to control society, beginning with women. It’s time to build a reinvigorated grassroots feminist movement that is ready to stand up and fight back!