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President Donald Trump says he wants to be the "fertilization president." Vice President JD Vance posits that we need "more babies" in the United States. Elon Musk -- who's not an official member of the Trump cabinet but might as well be -- is a "pro-natalist" who's personally trying to rectify the depopulation problem by impregnating every willing female he finds.

Meanwhile, they and other members of the Trumpian inner circle have been tossing out ideas about how to reverse the country's low birthrate -- which is below population replacement levels.

They've talked about giving medals to mothers of large broods. (The absolute last thing moms need is another piece of junk to find space for.) They've also discussed allocating nearly a third of Fulbright scholarships just for parents -- as if anyone with a newborn wants to add to their plate the amount of work involved with a prestigious international fellowship.

Vance said he thinks that if we removed car seat rules, people would have more kids. I'm not sure who he's hanging out with, but I've never -- not once -- met a human being who bases how many kids they're going to have on how many car seats will fit in their car. That would be like deciding where you're going to go to college based on whether the dorm cafeteria offers free soft-serve ice cream.

Trump aides have even floated the idea of a $5,000 tax break for new parents -- a kind of one-time "child bonus." Though I'd never turn up my nose at money, $5,000 wouldn't even cover the cost of summer camp for two kids at the park district. Parents, especially ones who work outside the home, spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on childcare, medical expenses, clothes, food and housing -- all expenses they wouldn't have if they hadn't decided to procreate.

If we truly want to increase the birthrate, we need to do much more than offer empty gestures, light prizes and insulting awards.

Now, parents don't have kids because it's a good financial decision. Parents have kids because we're crazy. But it sure could help to have some of the burden eased.

Paid family leave, which Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail for decades, would be a boon. Free health insurance for children, pregnant women and moms would be a tremendous relief, but I bet I can guess where Vance and Musk would fall on that one.

Quality childcare -- which every family needs on occasion, whether there's a stay-at-home parent or not -- has become exorbitantly expensive and difficult to find. Many parents are forced to designate a chief caregiver (the mom, usually) because of how inflexible jobs and schools can be. The options are either to spend a fortune to find good help or for one parent to do it all, which limits the type of work they can do (and hence, their ability to contribute to current household expenses and retirement accounts).

Ironically, the place where Trump has come closest to hitting on a solution is in IVF and infertility treatments. In February, Trump directed his domestic policy staff to provide ways to lower costs and increase availability for IVF. It's true that many women delay childbearing to establish themselves in careers and, once they're in a stable relationship and able to take on the challenges of parenthood, find that they're no longer as fertile as they once were. If they do have kids with IVF, they may start their journey as parents hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

To alleviate that, the government could force health insurance companies to cover multiple cycles of IVF and eliminate maximum expenditures for fertility treatments. Some insurance companies also have rules that lower their costs but also reduce the chances that a cycle of IVF or a fertility treatment will be successful. And young women who want to preserve their fertility should also be able to freeze their eggs at no or low out-of-pocket cost.

But I can only imagine the ways conservatives will bend over backward to avoid supporting these simple changes -- once the insurance companies start spending their lobbying dollars, that is.

Ultimately, there might be nothing the government can do to remove the biggest stressors of modern-day parenting -- the fear that social media and AI will have a much more profound influence on your children than you will, the worries that you're not doing enough to balance supporting them with helping them develop independence, the concerns that everyone else seems to be better at parenting than you are.

But if we are to make a difference, if we truly want to reverse the trend of ever-decreasing birthrates, there are efforts we can undertake. Like raising children, these measures won't be cheap or easy. We must decide, though, if they're worth the investment in time, effort and money -- the investment in our futures and the world we'd be helping to create.

As for me, I regret nothing. I have a hunch the United States would feel the same.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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