There’s been a lot of talk about birth rates this year.
President Donald Trump dubbed himself the “fertilization president” shortly after reentering the White House and declared, “We want more babies.” He reportedly considered policy proposals to incentivize American women to have more children, including a $5,000 “baby bonus” and a “National Medal of Motherhood” for any woman who has six or more children.
Most recently, at a White House press event alongside Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proclaimed the decline in birth rates to be “a national security threat.”
In short, the administration has embraced rhetoric that is unabashedly pronatalist — an ideology created to raise declining population rates that has historically been co-opted by fascist and authoritarian regimes.
U.S. fertility rates did reach a new low of 1.6 children per woman in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population in the U.S. Media outlets declared the “birth-rate crisis” to be “worse” than you thought and made a “feminist case for spending billions to boost the birthrate.” Now, half of Americans believe the country should be concerned about the consequences of decreasing birth rates.
