Having grown up in a world where overpopulation was touted as an existential threat, I have trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that humanity is now doomed to extinction because people — well, the right kind of people — are failing to procreate.
But that is precisely the message emanating from a White House in thrall to the Heritage Foundation’s “pro-family” Project 2025, and from quirky billionaire Elon Musk, who spreads his seed in a compulsive quest to reverse the world’s declining birth rate.
“I think for most countries, they should view the birth rate as the single biggest problem they need to solve,” Musk said last year at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia. “If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity and all the policies in the world don’t matter.”
Personally, Musk is sparing no effort.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, he has at least 14 children with four women he deems highly intelligent, and possibly many more. He calls this brood his “legion” after the Roman Empire’s largest military unit.
“To reach legion-level before the apocalypse,” he texted Ashley St. Clair, who has engaged him in a child support battle over their infant son, “we will need to use surrogates.” (Paging Margaret Atwood.)
It does not matter that Musk is the richest man in the world and can easily afford his harem. Having so many children with so many women is not just cringe, it is inimical to being a good dad. What kind of conservative family values are on display here?
Frankly, Musk seems to be a terrible father. He totes his 4-year-old son around like a shiny object. He’s called the boy his “cuteness prop.” He has told the world that he considers his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson, “dead, killed by the woke mind virus,” and that he was tricked into signing off on her gender transition. Is it any wonder that in a court filing Wilson described him as angry and absent and said she no longer wishes to be related to him?
Musk is not alone in his passion for procreation. “Pronatalism” in fact, is having quite a MAGA moment. For all the wrong reasons.
The New York Times reported last week that the White House is entertaining ideas about how to get American women to have more babies. They include offering a $5,000 bonus after a baby is born, awarding a medal of honor to women who bear six children or more and teaching women about their menstrual cycles so they know when they are ovulating.
After fighting against sex education, conservatives now want to teach it to facilitate pregnancy? (See what I mean about all the wrong reasons?)
No one really knows why the birth rate has declined, but it is a global phenomenon. Some theorize that as female education and employment rise, fertility rates drop. Makes sense to me. Controlling fertility is one of the best ways women can improve their lives, and the lives of their children.
From a health perspective, childbirth is far, far riskier than abortion.
The idea, articulated in 2021 by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett as she voted to gut Roe vs. Wade, that women with unwanted pregnancies can simply pop out the babies, leave them at the firehouse door, then go about their lives as if nothing has happened, is insane.
Women die in childbirth, especially in the U.S., where our maternal mortality rate is the highest of all wealthy countries. In 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. maternal mortality rate was 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births. In 2022, Black women died at a rate of 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births. Compare this terrible figure to, say, Norway, which has zero deaths per 100,000 live births. Or Switzerland, with one. Or Sweden, with three.
Despite our wealth and resources, we can’t seem to provide equal access to quality healthcare, nor have we been able to overcome systemic problems such as racism and socioeconomic inequality. Which is a shame, because more than 80% of American maternal deaths are considered preventable.
It hardly needs to be said that the people who valorize heterosexual marriage and big families are the same ones who offer little support to struggling American families, oppose reproductive rights and have tried to shut down health research on women before being shamed into restoring it.
If pronatalists really wanted to encourage bigger families, they would dedicate themselves to making parenthood easier.
They would push for universal healthcare and generous, mandated paid parental leave. They would support high-quality, affordable child care, a crushing expense for most families. They would offer early childhood education programs at no cost. They would increase the child tax credit, which can dramatically reduce the childhood poverty rate. They would require workplaces to be family friendly. They would drastically reduce the cost of college — or better yet, make it free.
Offering meaningless motherhood medals or small one-time payments are nothing more than pronatal publicity stunts. American families deserve better.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social Threads: @rabcarian