Scores of young people in our day are declaring their intention not to have children. The demographic winter that has frozen fertility rates in other Western countries has arrived at US shores. The reasons for the ambivalence around (or outright dismissal of) starting a family are both cultural and economic, even as the material and emotional demands of having children soar.  Veterans today are justly provided disability compensation, pensions, education, training and employment services, health care, home loans, insurance, and even burial costs. Mothers (and fathers), whose caregiving labors make possible all other goods, are barely given thanks. It’s time to resurrect the soldier-mother analogy and provide caregiving parents their just due.