Pronatalism

{{Philosophy}}

{{cquote|There’s some catastrophic thinking that goes on in the tech bro space of Silicon Valley and so on, and it’s usually not very practically oriented. If you really tried to promote pronatalism, inevitably what you end up doing is promoting a retrograde sort of [[anti-feminism]].|||[[Sociologist]] Philip N. Cohen, who is concerned about declining fertility rates but not impressed by pronatalist solutions.<ref>{{cite web | last=Cohen | first=Philip N. | title=Elon Musk’s father is quite racist, too, and pronatalism is an authoritarian boy toy (I told Sky News) | website=Family Inequality | date=2024-11-27 | url=https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2024/11/27/elon-musks-father-is-quite-racist-too-and-pronatalism-is-an-authoritarian-boy-toy-i-told-sky-news/ | access-date=2025-09-29}}</ref>}}

'''Pronatalism''' (or '''pro-natalism''' or '''natalism''') is a movement which encourages people to have more [[children]]. [[Environmentalist]]s would criticize this because clearly the population of the [[Earth]] cannot grow forever and it is not clear that the current population and standard of living are sustainable. [[Antinatalism|Antinatalist]]s would criticize this because life is suffering. And many decent people can't help noticing that actually existing pronatalists often want [[educated]] [[white people]] to have more children, but [[poor]] black people to have fewer. [[Historical]]ly, concerns about the birthrate of educated white people were tied to [[patriarchy]] (need those [[women]] busy with ''[[Kinder, Küche, Kirche]],'' not getting jobs and renting a room of their own), [[nationalism]] (need more [[conscript]]s and [[coal]] miners), [[eugenics]] (need the 'right kind' of babies), and [[white supremacy]] ([[Racism|can't let]] [[Racial slur|darkie]] [[White genocide|outnumber us]]).

==The basic argument==
Almost every rich [[country]] has a fertility rate below 2.1, so their populations will decline without [[immigration]].<ref>[https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate Our&nbsp;World&nbsp;in&nbsp;Data:&nbsp;Fertility&nbsp;Rate]</ref> Many people say they want more children, act like they want more children, or behave in strange ways that seem connected to their lack of children or care responsibilities. Some of the barriers to having children, such as expensive housing, [[culture]]s of overwork, [[social]] isolation, and pessimism about the near future, seem bad. Fertility rates fell abruptly in eastern [[Europe]] during the [[economic]] depression after the collapse of the [[USSR]], and rose in the North Atlantic in the prosperous years after [[World War Two]].<ref>[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un "Data Page: Fertility rate, total."] ''Our World in Data'' (2025). Data adapted from United Nations. Because this dataset begins in 1950, it does not show the first years of the baby boom in countries little damaged by the war.</ref> Rapid population decline, such as in [[South Korea]], would both cause practical problems (someone has to take care of the old) and destabilize the [[Economy|financial system]] (such as by causing the price of housing to fall or cutting [[tax]] revenues from young workers while increasing expenses on pensions and [[healthcare]] for the old). Most rich countries outside of [[Asia]] rely on high immigration to grow their population, but as fertility is in decline across most of the world, this cannot be continued forever. Some countries with low fertility, such as South Korea or [[Ukraine]], share land borders with hostile countries, and rapid population decline would make it difficult to defend them.

[[Government]] policies to increase the fertility rate have rarely had much effect, whereas countries such as [[China]] and [[Iran]] have successfully reduced their fertility.<ref>{{cite web | last=Cohen | first=Philip N. | title=Pronatalism’s tough math | website=Family Inequality | date=2024-10-20 | url=https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2024/10/20/pronatalisms-tough-math/ | access-date=2025-09-29}}</ref> Once a population begins to decline, it is hard to reverse. Pronatalists have proposed a wide range of policies, from changing culture to be more [[family]]-friendly in [[California]], to banning [[contraception]] and [[abortion]] in [[Communist]] [[Romania]] (which had disastrous consequences).

Most [[secular]] arguments for pronatalism are practical, whereas anti-natalism is more theoretical and [[philosophical]]. However, there are [[religious]] and nationalist arguments for pronatalism.

==Criticism==

[[Australian]] economist John Quiggin has criticized panic about aging populations, arguing that they often assume a world where people start working at 15 and stop at 64.<ref>{{cite | last=Quiggin | first=John | title=The intergenerational report tries to scare us about ageing. It’s an old fear, and wrong | publisher=The Conversation | date=2023-08-23 | doi=10.64628/aa.yfje59eta}}</ref> As there are fewer physically demanding [[job]]s that require little formal education, and since older people with quality healthcare are healthier, people are taking longer to enter the workforce and delaying retirement. Desk jobs in the information economy or even driving a combine don't require young, fit bodies. Small technical changes to pension policy can prevent modest population aging from destabilizing government finances. However, such policy changes are highly unpopular among workers, with an attempt to raise [[France]]'s retirement age from 62 to 64 due to concerns about an aging workforce resulting in massive protests of hundreds of thousands of people.<ref>[https://apnews.com/article/may-day-celebrations-labor-conditions-wages-046a06a418c3d180eaf39ff9c9e97d18 May Day: World’s workers rally, France sees pension anger], Alex Turnbull, Angela Charlton and Hyung-Jin Kim, ''AP News'' 1 May 2023</ref>

Because many of the countries with fertility rates above 2.1 are in [[Africa]] or the [[Islam]]ic world, criticisms of high immigration as a solution to low fertility often sound a lot like criticisms of letting black people and Muslims exist in rich countries. Pronatalist discussions often feature the [[Great Replacement]] [[conspiracy theory]], the idea that governments in rich temperate countries want to replace current populations with immigrants from poor hot countries. While we can't know if pronatalists would have argued for contraception 100 years ago when European populations were exploding, many argue that explosive population growth in Europe in the past is a ''fait accomplit'' that must never be reversed, but explosive population growth in Africa today is a problem.

{{quotebox|By the end of the current century, the population of sub-Saharan Africa alone is expected to triple. The problems this creates may eventually be mitigated by important efforts to supply contraception to poor women. But telling people in developed countries who are well-placed to have children to refrain from doing so is misguided. If anything, they should reproduce more, not less.<ref>[https://archive.ph/m3Rrd "If You’re Reading This Essay, You Should Probably Have (More) Children"] by [redacted] & Brian Boutwell (2 Feb 2017) [redacted] (archived from 21 Jul 2025 00:34:42 UTC).</ref>}}

The Natal Conference described itself as pronatalist, but just happened to be heavily promoted in hereditarian circles and attended by a range of shady people fascinated by race or the idea that rich people might just have good [[genes]] and poor people might have bad genes. Even Old Media reporters noticed that Daniel Hess, presented as a "mainly uncontroversial" pronatalist, praises people like [[Viktor Orban]] and Kevin Dolan.<ref>Sarah Jones, "The World Doesn’t Need More Elon Musk Babies," ''New York Magazine'', April 17, 2025 https://archive.ph/p67qI</ref><ref>Emma Goldberg, "Who Are the Women of the Pronatalist Movement?" ''New York Times'' (April 17, 2025). [https://archive.ph/rige2 Archived.]</ref> A book review both presents a sympathetic view of pronatalism for upper-middle-class people in the USA, and casually drops in hereditarian arguments and suggests that the book's (male) author is the kind of [[Catholic]] who disapproves of contraception but decided not to say that part out loud.<ref>Jane Psmith and John Psmith, [https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/joint-review-family-unfriendly-by "JOINT REVIEW: ''Family Unfriendly'', by Timothy P. Carney,"] ''The Psmiths'' Substack, October 14, 2024 [https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-reentry-by-eric-berger Another post] by the authors offhandedly mentions [[Alt-right_glossary#Lawfare|lawfare]] and the [[deep state]], two terms popular on far-right social media in the US.</ref> Another book concerned about population decline does not use the word pronatalism but thanks [[Effective altruism|Effective Altruist]] philosophers William MacAskill and Toby Ord for advice and the [[Elon Musk|Musk Foundation]] for funds.<ref>Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, ''After the Spike'' (Botley Head, 2025) Review by [https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/defusing-the-depopulation-bomb Dave Karpf]</ref> Some of the people intrigued by pronatalism are not polite secular intellectuals who just wish their friends would stop talking themselves out of having kids or would like better public transit so they don't have to act as the family chauffeur.

Wealthy men such as [[Elon Musk]] who boast of their many children don't have to suffer through pregnancy and childbirth and often pass off most of the work of parenting to nannies and other servants.<ref>Julia Black, [https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11 Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'] Business Insider, November 17, 2022</ref> This clearly is not a model for everyone, and suggests that they like the idea of having children more than the reality of parenting and housework. Musk both complains that Americans are not having enough children, and praises subordinates who work 12 hour days or even 120-hour weeks.<ref>[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/work/work-life-balance-forget-70-or-90-hours-workweek-elon-musk-says-120-hours-per-week-at-doge/articleshow/117921330.cms Work-life balance: Forget 70 or 90 hours workweek, Elon Musk says 120-hours per week at DOGE]], ''Times of India'', February 4, 2025</ref> Working such long hours makes it hard to find a partner and impossible to take care of children or keep a home running. A world of a few wealthy men with many children and a gaggle of servants and subordinates who barely have time to go to bed let alone have sex sounds like a [[chimpanzee]] band not an idyllic future.

There are some benefits to an aging population, such as less physical violence and [[war]]fare.

Because humans have culture, most of the things we care about are passed on by teaching and modelling not by spawning. South Korea and [[Japan]] are very influential in world culture even though their populations are shrinking; [[Egypt]] has a growing population but little influence on world culture. [[Christianity]] is collapsing across the global north because older generations could not convince their children to remain in the church, not because Christians stopped having children. If you are worried about preserving values or identities, focusing on spreading them might be more effective than having more children.

As recently as the 1960s, pop culture was full of fears of population growth and [[overpopulation]]. Demographic trends reversed and the [[Green Revolution]] prevented mass deaths from starvation. The current fears about population decline could be invalidated by events in the same way.

==As implemented by governments==

Pronatalist policies were common in agrarian empires. The kings of ancient Persia paid bonuses to female workers who had children,<ref>Pierre Briant, ''From Cyrus to Alexander'', translated by Peter T. Daniels (2002) page 435</ref> and the Roman emperor Augustus passed legislation to encourage marriage.<ref>Richard I. Frank, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25010681 "Augustus' Legislation on Marriage and Children"], ''California Studies in Classical Antiquity'', Vol. 8 (1975), pp. 41-52</ref> In recent times, many national governments try to increase the birthrate, such as democratic France and Sweden.<ref> Steven Philip Kramer, [https://womensenews.org/2014/04/sweden-pushed-gender-equality-boost-birth-rates/ Sweden Pushed Gender Equality to Boost Birth Rates], Womens eNews, April 26, 2014</ref> These policies often have limited or uncertain impact.<ref>Elizabeth Bauer, [https://www.janetheactuary.com/2019/08/09/forbes-post-is-sweden-our-fertility-boosting-role-model/ "Is Sweden Our Fertility-Boosting Role Model?"] - ''Forbes'', August 9, 2019</ref>  

[[Authoritarian]] and [[fascist]] regimes are often eager to promote fertility.<ref name=stelter/> Three aspects of these regimes may explain this: 

#the politics of eternity aspect of [[tyranny]] described by [[historian]] Timothy Snyder that looks to the [[Good old days|past as the ideal]] and projects the past into the future, meaning that for many in the society today's misery will always be tomorrow's misery.<ref>''On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century'' by Timothy Snyder (2017) Tim Duggan Books. {{isbn|0804190119}}.</ref>
#the tendency of authoritarian regimes for [[nationalist]] expansion, in particular [[irredentism]] and wars of aggression based on real or imagined maximalist territories of the dominant ethnic group within the state; such wars minimally require cannon fodder<ref>[https://www.aei.org/op-eds/putins-cannon-fodder-an-anthem-for-russias-doomed-youth/ Putin’s Cannon Fodder: An Anthem for Russia’s Doomed Youth] by Leon Aron (October 07, 2024) ''The Spectator'' via ''American Enterprise Institute''.</ref><ref>[https://theconversation.com/russia-is-paying-schoolgirls-to-have-babies-why-is-pronatalism-on-the-rise-around-the-world-258979 Russia is paying schoolgirls to have babies. Why is pronatalism on the rise around the world?] by Jennifer Mathers (July 5, 2025 12.38am NZST) ''The Conversation''. doi:10.64628/AB.ycpmy5q5h.</ref> and if successful require a replacement population for the envisioned [[ethnic cleansing]]
#misogyny and patriarchy. Women who are busy with babies are not competing with men in the workforce or the town square. 

Such pronatalist policies can result in a short-term increase in birth rates, but can cause a long-term decline in fertility,<ref name=stelter>[https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2024-09.html Pronatalist policies' backlash in authoritarian regimes] by Robert Stelter & Thomas Baudin (2024) ''Working papers 2024/09, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel''.</ref> and lead to a great deal of suffering among mothers<ref>[https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-miscarriage-blood-transfusions A “Striking” Trend: After Texas Banned Abortion, More Women Nearly Bled to Death During Miscarriage] by Kavitha Surana et al. (July 1, 2025, 5 a.m. EDT) ''ProPublica''.</ref> and children.<ref>[https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2025/deep-medicaid-spending-cuts-put-health-care-coverage-risk-one-five-enrolled-children Deep Medicaid Spending Cuts Put Health Care Coverage at Risk for One of Five Enrolled Children] by Sara Rosenbaum et al. (May 5, 2025) ''The Commonwealth Fund''.</ref> Romanian dictator [[Nicolae Ceaușescu]] dumped the excess children into underfunded orphanages. Raising children is expensive and its easier to force women to have children then force them to be attentive parents or provide their children with good schools and medical care.

Not all authoritarian governments promote fertility. For decades, China and the Islamic Republic of Iran tried to reduce fertility despite their harsh domestic policies.<ref>Asadisarvestani K, Sobotka T. "A pronatalist turn in population policies in Iran and its likely adverse impacts on reproductive rights, health and inequality: a critical narrative review." ''Sex Reprod Health Matters.'' 2023 Dec;31(1):2257075. doi: 10.1080/26410397.2023.2257075</ref>

==See also ==
* {{wpl|Bryan Caplan}}
* [[Hereticon]]

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Authoritarianism]]
[[Category:Fascism]]
[[Category:Muskiverse]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Racialism]]
[[Category:Racism]]

Categories: Authoritarianism, Fascism, Muskiverse, Philosophy, Racialism, Racism