Babies for What? The Contradictions at the Heart of America’s Pronatalist Moment

I. The Baby Bust

Lately, everyone from tech billionaires to conservative senators seems to be wringing their hands about one thing: not enough babies.

Elon Musk warns that “population collapse” is a greater threat than climate change. As a senator, Vice President JD Vance called low birth rates a national crisis and scolded “childless cat ladies” in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

A rising chorus of voices – including what Guardian reporter Carter Sherman refers to as the uniting of “’family values’ conservatives and tech bro rightwingers” — are rallying around “pronatalism,” the belief that governments and societies must act to encourage people to have more children and be more “pro-family”.

Unfortunately, this “pronatalism” has troubling roots in eugenics during the early 1900s and, as Sherman notes, “some of the more tech-minded, modern-day pronatalists do want to use breeding to fashion a better human race.”

The claim is that birth rates are falling, and with them, the future of the nation — or so the argument goes.

The movement argues there are enormous social consequences of declining birth rates (see, for example, those voices in “The End of Children” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker).

Some, including Vance, have paid lip service to expanding the Child Tax Credit and making childbirth free, but the uncomfortable truth remains: many of these same leaders are systematically undermining the very policies that support children and families.

The Administration has paid homage to the issue and has taken a few steps, such as issuing an Executive Order on In Vitro Fertilization, but it was accompanied with a rather cringy moment when the President referred to himself as “the fertilization president.”

The Administration’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has also spearheaded a somewhat baffling directive to “give preference” in transportation grants to “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

However, these somewhat bizarre attempts are about the best the Administration has offered thus far. In fact, the vast majority of the policies proposed by this Administration in just the first 100 days would harm children (e.g., proposing budget cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, seeking to gut the Department of Education, attacks on immigrant families and children, encouragement of child labor, attacking the Constitution’s birthright citizenship clause, questioning basic science and spreading misinformation about vaccines, implementing staffing cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services related to maternal and child health, public health and medical research, etc.).

The Washington Post and ProPublica have published extensive articles with headlines referencing the Trump Administration’s “War on Children” (I was cited in the latter piece.)

But the pronatalist movement remains committed.

For some, the ideology that drives “natalism” is associated with the “great replacement theory,” which promotes fear among White people about some fateful day in the future when White people will be replaced in the U.S. as a majority by immigrants and people of color.

This belief led one gunman to travel to my hometown of El Paso, Texas, to shoot 45 people and kill 23 people. The assassin targeted Hispanics, including children, and his manifesto read, “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

Others are driven by political opportunism – recognizing that stoking division, fear, and a rejection of diversity can be politically advantageous, even if it drives racial animus and greater political polarization.[1]

For those driving political division rather than inclusion, it often manifests in anti-immigrant policies from supporters who do not seem to care that, for example, their attacks on birthright citizenship exclusively target babies for harm, including the denial of services and protection.

The pronatalist and pro-life communities that claim to value babies display further contradictions via their support for politicians proposing $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Such a proposal threatens the health coverage of 37 million children in this country and would potentially increase infant and maternal mortality: the very mothers and babies they claim they want to promote.

The pronatalist community also fails to address the fact that they support an Administration whose policies with respect to the Child Tax Credit punish moms, babies, and their siblings for having a baby.

Research finds that mothers lose, on average, 38% of their income during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period.

For some, this income decline drops family income below the income threshold to qualify for the full Child Tax Credit. Some families might even lose the credit altogether for both their newborn and all their children (i.e., the “baby and child penalty”).

Stripping the Child Tax Credit from moms and babies during their time of greatest need is the opposite of being pro-mom and pro-baby.

If this movement were really about supporting children, wouldn’t it do everything possible to make birth healthier and more affordable for families? Wouldn’t it strive to make parenting easier? Wouldn’t it want to invest in paid leave, affordable child care, housing, and nutrition programs? Wouldn’t it seek to change policies, like the Child Tax Credit, that cut assistance to children and families who need it the most? Wouldn’t it urge Congress to move heaven and earth to help families thrive and flourish?

Instead, we see a different reality: child poverty spiking after the rollback of the expanded Child Tax Credit, access to child care collapsing in the wake of pandemic-era funding cuts, and Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) under attack. A movement that claims to value babies and children often supports policies that undermine their lives and well-being.

At the beginning of April, Speaker Mike Johnson, a self-described “pro-life” politician, shut down the House of Representatives and blocked a vote on legislation supported by a majority of its members to allow proxy voting by the parents of newborns in Congress.

What’s emerging isn’t a pro-child movement. It’s simply a pro-birth movement. And those aren’t the same thing.

As Sister Joan Chittister said to Bill Moyers:

I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

There are voices trying to bridge this gap. Policy analysts like Abby McCloskey have argued that pronatalist and pro-life rhetoric must be matched by family-friendly policies. They support ideas like an improved Child Tax Credit, child care, and paid leave. McCloskey writes:

…the status quo facing families with kids is not good. The majority of parents do not have protected and paid time off with their baby, and maternal health is deteriorating. There are widespread concerns about America’s falling fertility rate, along with the rest of the developed world.

Regardless of your views on abortion, we should all be trying to make America a better place for kids and parents.

Last year, McCloskey spoke to First Focus on Children’s Messellech Abebe and me on the Speaking of Kids podcast about these issues.

Unfortunately, voices like McCloskey are often pushed aside by extreme voices within the Trump coalition.

The result is a movement animated more by ideology than empathy. It speaks of babies in the abstract, but offers little for real children living in poverty, in shelters, or attending underfunded schools. It’s a vision that prioritizes birth over belonging. And it leaves a critical question unanswered: Who is this for?

Because in the MAGA version of pronatalism, not all children are equally valued. And not all families are equally welcome.

II. The Blunt Truth: MAGA Is Not Child-Friendly

It’s one thing to say we want more babies. It’s another thing entirely to build a society where children and families can thrive and flourish.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: by nearly every meaningful measure, the United States is failing its children — and the very pronatalists urging Americans to have more babies are often the same ones making life harder for families already doing the work of raising children.

Let’s start with the basics. The United States is the only wealthy country without a national paid family leave policy. We expect mothers to give birth, recover, and return to work in a matter of weeks, if they’re lucky enough to have a job that offers leave at all. For low-wage workers, it’s often a matter of unpaid time off or no time at all. That’s not just unjust — it’s unsafe.

Child care? It’s unaffordable for most families and increasingly unavailable altogether. The average annual cost of center-based child care makes trying to work and raise children a very expensive endeavor. During the pandemic, emergency funding helped stabilize the child care system. But that funding expired, and consequently, providers all across this country have been at risk of closing, which leaves working parents stranded.

Health care? Children still fall through the cracks. Millions are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but remain uninsured due to administrative barriers and red tape. And the Trump Administration and Congress are actively threatening the access, benefits, and coverage of 37 million children and pregnant women across this country with up to $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and CHIP.

Education? Our public schools are under constant attack — underfunded, politicized, and pushed to do more with less. Teachers are fleeing. Children are struggling. And instead of supporting kids, politicians are banning books, dismantling curricula, imposing speech codes on both teachers and students, and threatening public schools with cuts and private school vouchers.

And child poverty? One of the most damning statistics of all: after a historic one-year drop in child poverty thanks to the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), Congress let it expire. In 2021, that policy alone cut child poverty by nearly half. In 2022, child poverty more than doubled. Child poverty is a policy choice and causing it to rise quite intentional.

This is not the landscape of a pro-child society. It’s the footprint of policy neglect. And it’s why the rhetoric of today’s pronatalist movement rings so hollow.

If you actually care about the future of the country — if you care about babies — you have to care about the conditions in which they’re born. You have to care about whether parents can afford formula and diapers. You have to care about whether toddlers have a safe place to grow and learn. You have to care about whether a child can see a doctor or eat a school lunch or live in a home without mold.

These are not luxuries. These are the minimums a child needs to grow, develop, and one day contribute back to society.

III. The Disconnect: They Want More Babies, But Won’t Support Families

It’s one thing to believe that having children is good for society. It’s another to claim the moral high ground on family values while voting against everything families need to survive.

That’s the disconnect at the heart of today’s American pronatalism. Many of its loudest champions aren’t just failing to support children and parents — they’re actively standing in the way.

Take Vice President Vance. He’s built his political identity around defending “traditional families” and warning of civilizational decline. He argues that low birth rates stem from cultural selfishness and even proposed government subsidies for married parents with young kids — at least on paper and in words.

But when it came time to renew the expanded Child Tax Credit that slashed child poverty in 2021, Vance sided with senators that let it die. This past August, Vance failed to show up for a Senate vote to improve the Child Tax Credit.

And of course, there’s Elon Musk, the techno-visionary-turned-population-alarmist, who warns that “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces.” But when it comes to policies that would make it easier for ordinary families — not just billionaires— to raise kids, he’s silent. Or worse, dismissive.

Musk has railed against government programs, mocked the idea of work-life balance, and presides over a company, Tesla, that was sued for pregnancy discrimination and Musk has faced criticism for family-unfriendly conditions at Twitter/X. He has also overseen the DOGE, which has imposed enormous cuts to programs of critical importance to children.

This isn’t an accident — it’s a pattern. Whether it’s cutting food assistance, attacking Medicaid, blocking parental leave, or undermining public education, the actions of many self-declared pronatalists show a fundamental indifference to the realities of raising children in America.

Their vision of pronatalism isn’t about supporting all families. It’s about enforcing a particular kind of family — heterosexual, two-parent, wealthy, preferably religious, and above all, obedient. Families that don’t conform to that mold – single parents, LGBTQ+ families, immigrant families, families of color — are too often excluded or even targeted.

The message is chillingly clear: some babies are worth having. Others should be punished.

This selective, performative version of pro-family politics is not only morally bankrupt, it’s demographically doomed. Because here’s what the data shows: people want to have children.

In surveys, Americans report wanting more children than they ultimately have. And they’re not delaying or forgoing parenthood out of selfishness or secularism. They’re doing it because it’s too hard, too expensive, and too unsupported to have children in this country.

If you want more babies, you don’t shame people. You support them. You make parenting possible, not painful. You build a society where people are free to form families of all kinds, with dignity, safety, and support. You pass policies that say: we see you, we value your children, and we’ve got your back.

What we’re getting instead is the opposite: a culture of coercion, not care.

IV. The Culture War Overlay: Who Gets to Have Babies?

If the pronatalist movement were truly about valuing children, it would support all children. But scratch the surface, and a different agenda often reveals itself — one that’s more concerned with who is having babies than with whether children are actually cared for.

Because while the public-facing message is about falling birth rates, the subtext is often steeped in race, gender, control, and notions of deservingness.

Once again, take Vice President Vance, who has warned that childless single people are contributing to societal decline and suggested that women ought to stay in unhappy marriages “for the kids.” Or Elon Musk, who has called birth control and abortion part of a “civilizational death spiral,” while elevating the need for “smart people” to reproduce — rhetoric uncomfortably close to the logic of eugenics.

What ties these arguments together is a vision of pronatalism that’s not universal, but selective. It’s not about ensuring every child is born into a safe, nurturing environment. It’s about enforcing a narrow ideal: the “right” kind of families having the “right” kind of children in the “right” kind of way.

Too often, that means:

• Excluding single mothers, who are routinely stigmatized rather than supported, even though nearly 1-in-4 U.S. children live in single-parent households.

• Targeting LGBTQ families, with lawmakers banning books that feature same-sex parents, restricting adoptions, or barring gender-affirming care, even for minors with supportive families.

• Demonizing immigrants, despite the fact that immigrant families are helping sustain population growth in many regions. Instead of welcoming them, we see family separations, child detentions, and efforts to block even undocumented children from accessing basic services. We are witnessing U.S. citizen children of immigrants being deported, even when they have cancer.

• Punishing mothers and babies of color, by banning policies that seek to address and eliminate racial disparities in areas such as maternal and child health.

And all the while, the same leaders who champion these attacks claim the mantle of being “pro-family.”

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about building a better world for children. It’s about building a more controlled one — where family formation is only celebrated if it conforms to a rigid cultural script.

In contrast, this is why reproductive freedom and child well-being must be seen as two sides of the same coin. The freedom to have children must come with the freedom to raise them in dignity, safety, and love. That means ensuring access to health care and maternal support. It means protecting LGBTQ+ parents and youth. It means investing in communities of color, including the nation’s most diverse generation ever. And it means saying loudly and unequivocally: all children count.

Because the future isn’t saved by forcing more births. It’s shaped by how we treat the children who are already here.

V. There Is a Path Forward — But It Starts With Kids, Not Birth Rates

The irony at the heart of America’s pronatalist panic is that we already know what works. If the goal is to help families thrive, to give people the freedom and support to have the children they want — there’s no mystery about how to do it.

It starts by shifting the focus from birth rates to child well-being.

Around the world, countries that have stabilized or even increased their birth rates haven’t done so through scolding, fear-mongering, or cultural conformity. They’ve done it by making it easier to raise a child. They treat families as a cherished public good.

Contrast that with the U.S., where raising children isn’t seen as a private burden and not as a shared investment in the nation’s future. Have a baby? Good luck. Go it alone. And when it gets hard, don’t expect the government to lift a finger. In fact, the government might engage in “organized abandonment,” or worse, punish you.

In the case of the Child Tax Credit, government policy leaves 17 million children behind with a reduced credit and higher rates of child poverty because their parents earn too little to qualify for the full credit.

But what if we flipped the script? What if we actually decided to center kids in our policies and not just in our rhetoric?

Here’s what a real, comprehensive child- and family-first agenda could look like:

• Reinstate and expand the Child Tax Credit, especially in its fully refundable form as recently introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Michael Bennet this week, to ensure every family has the financial support they need when welcoming a new baby.

• Guarantee paid family and medical leave at the national level, so that no parent has to choose between a paycheck and a newborn.

• Invest in Head Start, affordable child care, and pre-K, recognizing these programs are not perks, but are critically important child development measures.

• Expand Medicaid and CHIP so all children have health coverage, and streamline enrollment so children don’t fall through the cracks during eligibility reviews.

• Raise wages and workplace standards, especially for caregivers, educators, and service workers, who have jobs that are disproportionately held by women and are underpaid.

• Support mental health services, home visiting programs, and community-based supports for new parents, especially those navigating poverty, trauma, or postpartum stress.

We know these policies work, not just from international examples, but from our own recent history. We saw what was possible in 2021, when the federal government made bold, temporary investments in children. Poverty dropped. Food insecurity fell. Parents had breathing room. And then, it vanished.

This wasn’t an accident. It was a choice. Just as lawmakers can choose to bring those policies back.

If we want more babies, we need to be the kind of country where children and the people raising them are supported, not shamed. Empowered, not punished. Seen, not sidelined. Included, not isolated.

Because a truly pro-child society isn’t built on ideology. It’s built on infrastructure, investment, and care.

VI. Don’t Be Fooled by the Baby Talk

It’s easy to say we need more babies. It’s harder to build a society where children and the people raising them are treated with dignity, fairness, and care.

The current wave of pronatalist rhetoric from senators, billionaires, and media pundits is loud, emotional, and often laced with moral panic. But don’t be fooled by the baby talk. Talk is cheap. And too many of these voices aren’t fighting for kids — they’re just paying lip service to them, or worse, using them.

The real test of whether someone values children isn’t what they say about birth rates. It’s what they do when a child is born into poverty. When a mother needs paid leave. When a family can’t afford diapers or housing or insulin. When a child’s teacher is underpaid and their school is crumbling. When a parent needs mental health support, and there’s nowhere to turn.

The truth is, the U.S. has never truly put children at the center of its policy agenda. Kids don’t vote. They don’t have PACs. And too often, they are left to suffer the consequences of adult inaction.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can choose to build a nation that honors its children. That means investing in child health, in family stability, in education, in dignity. It means refusing to accept a politics that praises parenthood while punishing parents. It means calling out the hypocrisy of those who demand more babies while doing nothing for the ones already here.

And it means remembering, every time we hear a politician wring their hands about fertility rates, to ask: Whose children do you care about? What are you doing to support them? And are you willing to match your rhetoric with action? Whose for kids, and whose just kidding?

Because a society that truly values children doesn’t need to beg for babies.

It becomes a place where people want them and can afford to raise and care for them.

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ENDNOTE

[1] Brown, X., Rucker, J. M., & Richeson, J. A. (2021). Political ideology moderates White Americans' reactions to racial demographic change. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 1-19.

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