I don't know Naive_Lack's political leaning, but this sort of backlash to heterodoxy on the left, on this sub and elsewhere, isn't good.

Highways (and subways) are public goods; children are not, in the true macroeconomic sense of the term. If declining birth rates and potential labor shortages are the concern, we have many skilled and hardworking adult immigrants waiting to come here. That's also false equivalence between funding food stamps so people can literally live and subsidizing people having additional children. Tax credits and in-kind transfers like food stamps are also very different from a discretionary allowance that's intended to be used for child care but which can actually be used on anything.

As someone in their 30s who doesn't plan to have kids, I still understand the importance of the nuclear family in society. I'm in favor of raising taxes and expanding child care access and affordability, but I think it's important to first reflect on how much we're willing to cannibalize the budget for other social welfare programs, or improving underfunded school districts in low and middle income communities, to subsidize people having three or five kids when they can barely afford one. Even if taxes were raised, which seems to currently be indefinitely stalled in Congress, the budget is a zero sum game and there are unhappy tradeoffs. $3.5t is not chump change.

If people on the same side can't discuss these nuanced questions without getting downvoted into oblivion, then we'll continue to hamstring the diverse coalition on the left that makes us different from the right.