Heritage Foundation report sparks outcry

Kate Perez

USA TODAY

Social media users are denouncing the idea of 'marriage bootcamps' as 'ridiculous' and 'demographic control' online after an unadopted policy plan from the conservative think tank that helped create Project 2025 proposed the camps as a way to boost birth rates.

The online report, titled 'Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,' published Jan.8 by The Heritage Foundation, lays out ways the group says the United States can 'restore the family home,' including through monetary incentives for couples to have children and stay married, among other efforts.

In its report, the Heritage Foundation calls on the Trump administration and Congress to consider a plethora of proposed actions it says would help reverse the declining birth rate in the United States.

Overall population growth has slowed 'significantly,' with an increase of just 1.8million people from July1, 2024, to July1, 2025, according to U.S. census estimates released Jan.27.

There were about 519,000 more births than deaths in the United States during that period, representing growth similar to the year before, the Census Bureau said. The birth rate is higher than during the pandemic, but it still 'represents a significant decline from prior decades,' according to the agency.

The report outlines The Heritage Foundation’s plan to combat this, including reforming current programs related to welfare, higher education, surrogacy and more, while placing family building and marriage as the focus of both American lives and politics.

Some of the other major suggestions in the report include:

Reviewing grants, policies and regulations that the federal government is involved with to 'measure how it helps or harms marriage and family.'

Financially incentivizing marriage and childbearing by placing $2,500 into investment accounts for newlyweds.

Rerouting the current $17,670 adoption tax credit to married parents for each of their own newborns, as long as one parent is employed.

Reforming educational curriculum to teach life skills such as relationship management, parenting basics and financial literacy.

Revising higher education subsidies to allow Americans to 'avoid pointless debt, start their careers earlier, and form families sooner.'

The report also floated the idea of 'marriage bootcamps' that aim to cover topics such as communication, money management, and conflict resolution for 'cohabiting couples with children.'

The successful completion of the program would conclude with couples 'ready to walk down the aisle at a communal wedding,' the report states, and a potential $5,000 monetary incentive − funded by foundations or private donors − for couples to get married. Additionally, newlyweds would leave with a mentor couple to guide them through marriage after the wedding.

Delano Squires, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing, said programs supporting marriage like this already exist, and federal funding has in the past been designated for marriage education, including by the Administration for Children & Families. Ideally, he said, the program would create and support a culture of marriage in what he called 'marriage deserts,' or places where people want to get married but aren’t doing so.

'We know that in some of these neighborhoods, particularly low-income, working-class neighborhoods, people are not getting married before having children,' Squires said. 'But you can find a critical mass of cohabiting couples, right? So they have kids together, they live together. Oftentimes, their finances are mixed up together. How about we ... work with them to move them from, as old folks would say, shacking up to settling down.'

Squires said the marriage boot camps are envisioned to be completely voluntary.

Paul Eastwick, relationship psychology expert and author of 'Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection,' said that while he views the mentor couple idea as potentially beneficial for newlyweds, he is unsure how successful the overall boot camps would be based on the usefulness of similar past programs, such as former President George W. Bush’s Healthy Marriage Initiative.

However, there’s a risk that the delivery of these skills and marriage tips, such as in a classroom format, might not resonate with people trying to manage their marriage or be beneficial in the end, he said.

'There’s good evidence that therapy can work, but a lot of ways that therapy works, it’s not like teaching skills in the abstract,' Eastwick said. 'It’s not like you take a class and you get an ‘A’ and now you’re ready to be married. That’s not where most of the goodness or the badness of a relationship comes from.'

Alternatively, Eastwick said he is more concerned with loneliness than marriage when it comes to a lack of socialization and relationships in the United States. Getting people to spend time together and form connections in person would be his first step to reduce that loneliness that could eventually result in more relationships, he said.

'We don’t want to go back to where we were stigmatizing people for wanting to be single,' Eastwick said. 'But if you’re single and looking, if there are creative ways of helping these people to find each other that aren’t swiping (on dating apps), I think that’d be great.'

The Heritage Foundation’s plan is a recommendation to the Trump administration that has not been adopted. The camp is designated as being for cohabiting couples with children. The report is receiving mixed responses from some social media users who view the plan as a potential way for the government to control aspects of their personal lives.

In a video with over 72,000 views, one user lists reasons not to be picked as part of a hypothetical application for the program.

'I don’t want to get married ... in fact, I don’t want to be in a relationship at all,' the TikTok user declares. 'That should be enough reasons.'

Others voiced concern over suggestions in the report regarding reproductive health, education and welfare benefits.

'This is not about love, this is not about families, and this is not about helping people thrive and survive,' said another user in a TikTok video with 46,500 likes. 'This is demographic control and racial panic.'

Contributing: Phaedra Trethan, USA TODAY