The rise of pronatalism - deadbeat dads want more children
The rise of pronatalism: why Musk, Vance and the right want women to have more babies.The movement unites ‘family values’ conservatives and tech bro rightwingers. Will this incoherent coalition hold?
In his first address to the United States after becoming vice-president, JD Vance stood on stage and proclaimed: “I want more babies in the United States of America.”
Weeks later, Donald Trump signed an executive order pledging support for in vitro fertilization, recognizing “the importance of family formation and that our nation’s public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children”.
In late January, a Department of Transportation memo directed the agency to prioritize projects that "give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average".
And last week, it was reported that Elon Musk, the unelected head of the government-demolishing "department of governmental efficiency" and a man who has said that the "collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far", had become a father of 14.
Republicans have long heralded the importance of "family values". But in these developments, many see mounting signs of a controversial ideology at work: pronatalism.
Pronatalism is so contentious that people often struggle to agree on a definition. Pronatalism could be defined as the belief that having children is good. It could also be defined as the belief that having children is important to the greater good and that people should have babies on behalf of the state, because declining birth rates are a threat to its future.
Perhaps most importantly, pronatalism could be defined as the belief that government policy should incentivize people to give birth. While people on the left might agree with some pronatalist priorities, pronatalism in the US is today ascendant on the right.
It has become a key ideological plank in the bridge between tech bro rightwingers like Musk and more traditional, religious conservatives, like the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson – who once said in a House hearing that abortions were harming the economy by eliminating would-be workers.
But there are plenty of widening cracks in that bridge and, by extension, Trump’s incoherent coalition.
Read more at The Guardian