Pronatalists 'ascendant': How a 'key ideological plank' found home in 'Trump’s incoherent coalition'

11 March

During the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance, drew widespread criticism for his attacks on Americans who don't have biological children. Vance's "childless cat ladies" comments set off a major controversy, and they weren't comments made randomly — as Vance, like SpaceX/Tesla/X.com leader Elon Musk, is a prominent figure in the far-right "natalist" or "pronatalist" movement.

Pronatalists, many of whom are Christian nationalists, believe that Americans are obligated to have as many kids as possible. And they even have their own convention: Natal Conference 2025, set for March 28-29 in Austin, Texas. The event's website embeds a tweet from Musk that reads, "If birth rates continue to plummet, human civilization will end."

Guardian reporter Carter Sherman examines the pronatalist movement's influence on the Trump Administration in an article published on March 11.

"Pronatalism is so contentious that people often struggle to agree on a definition," Sherman explains. "Pronatalism could be defined as the belief that having children is good….. While people on the left might agree with some pronatalist priorities, pronatalism in the U.S. is today ascendant on the right. It has become a key ideological plank in the bridge between tech bro right-wingers 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."

According to University of Pittsburgh history professor Laura Lovett, pronatalist arguments were made back in the 1920s after American women gained the right to vote.

Lovett, author of the 2009 book, "Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890-1930," told The Guardian, "There's this linkage between women’s educational and aspirational futures and the declining birth rate. There was this anxiety that white, native-born, middle-class women were having smaller families."

In 2025, Sherman observes, Republicans "invoke pronatalist rhetoric in support of their top culture-war causes."

Elizabeth Gregory, director of women's gender and sexuality studies at the University of Houston in Texas, believes that pronatalists fail to see the big picture when it comes to the economic affect that having more kids has on women.

Gregory told The Guardian, "Childbearing can reshape a woman's entire future. This idea that the child is the only person in the dyad loses a real understanding of how embedded and dependent children are on their mothers. Fertility affects many, many parts of culture and talking about it can’t be reduced to just a few soundbites."

Read The Guardian's full article at this link.

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