The pro-natalism movement argues that people need to have more babies. Some want to prevent economic implosion, others want to protect traditional family values. And some of the loudest voices in the movement are now in the White House. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers and Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Further reading: The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast This episode was made in partnership with Vox's Future Perfect team. Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk holding one of his children on his shoulders. Photo by Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why are birth rates declining globally?
Birth rates around the world are declining. Women are having fewer children. The question of why this is is hotly debated. And on Today Explained, we're going to talk to an expert who says she has an answer.
You have the option of going out with your friends, getting dressed, coordinating. Or you can just relax, chill out on the sofa and watch a film or play a video game. And maybe that's a bit easier, a bit more relaxing when you've had a hard day, you just crash out and relax.
But the movement to get us to have more children, publicly led by people like Vice President J.D. Vance and Vice President Elon Musk, is also controversial because it is led by Elon Musk, who has as many as 14 children by four different mothers. And by J.D. Vance, who has suggested that non-parents should get fewer votes than parents.
Chapter 2: Who are the prominent figures in the pro-natalist movement?
What should we make of the pro-natalist movement that's coming up?
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So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America.
It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Vox's Rachel Cohen, who covers, among other things, family policy. OK, everybody has been talking about who's having babies. For my money, it's given none of your business. But you've actually been covering this as a news story. What's going on?
So there's a few reasons we're hearing about it more lately. One is that birth rates are falling pretty much everywhere, including in some of the countries we used to associate with really high birth rates, like India, Brazil or Mexico. And yes, the United States. It's happening worldwide at such a fast rate that last year the U.N.
announced the number of people on Earth will probably peak in the next 75 years, which is a pretty big change from even what they were projecting a decade ago when experts thought the population peak was still well over a century away. And the other main reason people are talking about it in the U.S., at least, is that you have people like Elon Musk and J.D. Vance.
They're speaking out about it a lot lately. Musk calls falling birth rates the biggest danger civilization faces by far.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of falling birth rates?
All right. So I understand in the relatively immediate term that fewer people means fewer young people, fewer workers, fewer people paying taxes. The pronatalists seem to think we are heading toward like a near term disaster.
Is there any proof of that? Demographers have been really wrong in the past. There have been population panics the other way that the world was producing too many people. And that led to really horrible policy responses like mass sterilization campaigns and forced abortions and eugenics. So I think we should be humble in these moments as we're making predictions about the future.
China's one child policy went on for, I don't know, 35 years. And that was a freak out over too many people.
Exactly. Now they're stigmatizing childless women in China and trying to figure out how to get people to have more babies.
Do we have data showing that women really want more children and can't have them or are being barred in some way? Or is this just what we want?
I think this is a key question. We know that most women, even those who do really want to be pregnant, Parents tend to prefer smaller families, which, you know, they're easier to balance with jobs, hobbies, friends, and of course, less expensive. Most people don't really want five to 10 kids anymore. I think the real fundamental question is whether women with zero kids might be
have wanted at least one or two if they had felt more supported either by society, their government, or a partner or both. So one of the big arguments that pronatalists make, including progressive liberal ones, is they point to surveys that suggest some people would be open to having more kids if it were easier and more affordable.
So from that perspective, I think pronatalism has some overlaps with the reproductive justice movement, which says we should build a society that supports people having however many or how few children that they want. But it is complicated.
Well, fortunately, the pronatalists in the U.S. now have a lot of power. And therefore, I imagine they can make policy to get us all to have more kids. What policies have they introduced?
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Chapter 4: How do pro-natalists view society's childbearing trends?
So compatibility increasingly depends on love, whether people really enjoy each other's company. But of course, there are lots of frictions. You know, people might be manipulative, deceitful, unfaithful. And if there are lots of frictions, they may call it quits.
So that might be one aspect of it, economic convergence between men and women's earnings and cultural liberalization making singledom more permissible. On top of that, on top of those shifts, I think the big change that we see all across the world, all at very different levels of income, is the massive improvement in hyper-engaging online entertainment. In that TikTok, video games, Call of Duty,
World of Warcraft, Bridgerton, Netflix. You can browse Blackpink's live stream. Let's go! or go on Pornhub. I'm going to skip this one. Anything you like. All these technological advances enable instant access to world's most charismatic, charming content. Or maybe you prefer to do sports bets and gambling.
And so why venture out when everything is at your fingertips, from Netflix to Zoom meetings? And so we see, tracing the data over time, that there is growing isolation. Young people are spending much more time alone. So in recent surveys, 65% of young American men say, no one knows me well. 28% of Gen Z didn't socialize with anyone they didn't live with in the past week.
So we just see this global trend and it is absolutely global. So, for example, last year I was in Mexico and lots of different Mexican little towns. And mothers would say the biggest problem here is that our teenage sons are spending all their times in their bedroom.
And I'll hear the same stories in little Indian villages, in Bangladeshi villages, all these people being hooked on hyper engaging media. Are there any countries that buck the trend? Well, yes, actually. So, for example, I was in Uzbekistan for a month last year and there there's been an increase in fertility.
When I'm in Uzbekistan, people typically ask me four questions and the answer should always be yes. Do you like Uzbekistan? Do you like Uzbek food? Are you married? Do you have children? And that tells you a lot about people's priorities, a national pride and also this strong onus that women should be married and have children. So that's one option.
You just pump up the status of marriage and fertility. In Georgia, their Orthodox patriarch similarly did the same of bumping up the status of children and fertility. In Hungary, they tried to give people cheaper mortgages if they promised to be married and have children.
But what I'm saying, the Alice Evans theory of the collapsing fertility, is that these pronatal incentives of saying $2,000, $5,000 to have an extra child... They're simply too small if the prior constraint is that most people are increasingly single. I think that most governments are putting the cart before the horse by focusing on couples rather than realizing this prior constraint.
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