America has a population problem and the Trump administration wants to fix it. The problem with that is, for many decades, the government has contributed to the dilema. Moreover, there are other, more trustworthy, institutions that can handle this sort of problem.

The birthrate in the U.S. is 1.6 children per woman, below the 2.1 replacement rate needed for the population to sustain itself without immigration. Up until recently, our leaders used this fact to justify the unceasing deluge of third-world migrants. Rather than address why the people who already live here aren’t having children, America’s leaders have been replacing the native population with foreigners.

The Trump administration wants to change this. They’ve been meeting with pronatalism groups and kicking around ideas on how to incentivize more Americans to get married and have many children. The New York Times published a report on this. White House officials are looking at giving a $5,000 baby bonus to every American mom after delivery, reserving 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and funding a program that teaches women about their menstrual cycles. The Times made sure to point out that the White House sees only traditional-style families as legitimate. Boo-hoo.

It’s refreshing to have leaders who have respect for thousands of years of proven social science, or, as I see it, respect for God’s design for the most essential building block of society. It’s also nice to have leaders who want this country’s future to be perpetuated by the people who already live here, people whose ancestors built this country. Coming from an immigrant, this may seem like an odd and hypocritical position. But I have my reasons. First off, my family came here legally. That’s an important distinction. Also, we came to the U.S. fully intending to become Americans, while many of today’s immigrants don’t. And thanks to the rot from within, American pride is at an all-time low, even among the native born population, making it more difficult to sell immigrants on the greatness of America, capitalism, and limited government. The Biden administration, run by anti-American Marxists seeking to destroy the country, knew this, which is why they brought in 10 million unvetted, unskilled foreigners.

But as much as I agree with the Trump administration’s pronatalism efforts, I think they’re missing key pieces of the puzzle. Baby bonuses are great, but the reasons Americans aren’t getting married and having children are primarily cultural and out of its purview. The media like to say Americans aren’t having children because they can’t afford them anymore. But that’s not entirely, or even mostly, accurate. The groups having the most kids are lower income and wealthy Americans. It’s the middle class who are dialing it back. And while there is truth to the criticism that the middle class is subsiding the indigent, they’ve still got more resources.

The problem is Americans have become secularized, selfish, and infected with feminist ideology. It’s not that kids are unaffordable, it’s that having them will leave less money for vacations, regular shopping sprees, and $8 lattes.

Children also get in the way of the career-driven woman, which is what women have been told to be since the 1960s. This is one of the most impressively successful propaganda campaigns, given that careers are stressful and, more times than not, unrewarding. Women have been told it’s better to be cooped up in a cubicle or to get puked on my strangers while working at medical facilities rather than cultivate life and build a sanctuary for your family. Women have been told its’s oppressive and patriarchal to let the man bear the brunt of the cruel world at the price of a homecooked meal. Women have been told that every society since the beginning of time had it wrong until the feminists came along and enlightened us two hours ago.

So—where has all this progress gotten us?

For starters, more than half of liberal women battle mental disorders. Liberal women are the ones who take feminist ideas most seriously. While some are certainly made for the workplace, many more than currently occupy it are not. Women are maternal, nurturing, and creative beings who don’t compartmentalize well. When you drop them in a purely transactional setting, things can go haywire. But thanks to decades of brainwashing, many don’t even know they’d be better off in a traditional home setting. They blame Trump for their anger, anxiety, and misery.

Also, feminist lies have ruptured relations between the two sexes.

Half of married couples get divorced. But this only became normal during the end of the last century. Men are innately built to protect, provide, and lead. But the feminists tell women that following a man’s lead is oppressive and that they should be the ones in charge. So relationships are fraught with power struggles, causing acrimony that eventually results in divorce. The irony is that women in general, even liberal ones, still want masculine men. But they don’t realize you can’t separate the flour from the cake.

All this has culminated into a crisis. Americans are getting married later, if at all, and they’re having less babies, if any. And the Trump administration, led by a man who thinks it’s his duty to solve all the country’s problems, wants to implement policies that will reverse this trend.

But the best thing the government can do is not help. As Ronald Reagan pointed out, The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.

Government help has done enough damage. Here are just a few examples.

Public schools have become major conduits for the normalization of homosexuality and, in some cases, even trans ideology. If the government wants Americans to have more children, it should stop supporting lifestyles that don’t produce children. All ties between the government and education should be severed. This includes abolishing the Department of Education. As Christopher Rufo points out, the DoE, through NGOs it partially funds, funnels deviant ideologies into schools. The best way to stop this is to completely end all government meddling in education and give the states and the local districts control of schools. With the schools totally controlled by locals, most schools will not bring such degeneracy in their communities.

The government should also stop doling out taxpayer money to universities. Academia is the primary breeding ground for the insane and deviant ideologies that have eroded America’s Christian tradition. It was in the university setting that pervert Alfred Kinsey conducted bunk studies that ultimately kickstarted the sexual revolution. Kinsey claimed his studies concluded that Americans were more depraved than generally believed. His “studies” snaked their way into academia, corrupting generations of collegegoers who went on to infect the rest of society. What Kinsey didn’t reveal were that the samples in his “studies” were prisoners, prostitutes, and other outcasts who didn’t represent the general population.

It’s also time the government stop giving Planned Parenthood a single cent. Defenders of the abortion provider like to yammer on about how taxpayer money isn’t allocated to the abortions department. That’s a wholly inane point. Obviously, by funding the other functions it performs, it allows Planned Parenthood to dedicate its non-government funds to killing babies.

The crux of it is the government is not responsible for, trustworthy of, or tasked with incentivizing Americans to get married and have children.

But there is one institution that is.

Those of us who attend church are used to seeing young families pulling up in the parking lot with a pack of children in tow. But the idea that religious people have more children is not just anecdotal. It’s statistically provable.

Americans of conservative faiths, from evangelical protestants to traditional Catholics to Mormons, all have, on average, more children than the rest of the American population. They also have more children than the recommended replacement rate.

Also, people of faith tend to get married earlier, more often, and they tend to stay married. This too is statistically provable. There have been attempts to muddy the water on this fact and sully the reputation of the Church. Claims have floated around that churchgoers are just as likely to get divorced as their secular counterparts. This is a lie. Any attempt to lump the divorce rate of non-churchgoers with that of regular churchgoers is patently disingenuous.

If this nation’s leaders truly care about boosting the birthrates, they’ll get out of the way, drastically reduce the government’s footprint in our lives, remove any anti-Christian government policies, and let Americans of faith live their best lives.

As for conservative religious Americans, and Christians especially, be fruitful and multiply. This is our chance to take back the culture. If leftists continue being selfish deviant, and self-destructive, and they continue to do us the favor of not procreating, we’ll have the country back in a couple of generations.

As with most societal ills, the remedy once again lies within the Church.

Paul Dragu is an award-winning newspaper journalist, a senior editor at The New American magazine, and the collaborative writer of Defector: A True Story of Tyranny, Liberty, and Purpose.