Instead of continuing to try to fill the birth-rate void with foreigners, the Trump administration is considering policies that incentivize marriage and childbearing among the American citizenry.
White House officials have recently been discussing policies that include giving a $5,000 baby bonus to every American mom after delivery, reserving 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and funding a program that teaches women about their menstrual cycles, according to a report by The New York Times. The leftist newspaper informed readers that the agenda to boost the native birth rate applies only to straight Americans.
Pronatalist advocacy groups have suggested that Republican legislators should also increase the child tax credit enough to offset rising prices.
White House aides have been meeting with birth-rate experts. The Times’ reporting is based on four people who’ve been part of the meetings. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump “is proudly implementing policies to uplift American families.”
Declining Birth Rates
Birth rates in the U.S. have been continuously falling since 2007. There were only 54.5 births for every 1,000 females aged 15 to 44 in 2023. That’s the lowest figure on record, and 3 percent down from the 2022 birth rate, according to the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since 2007 the birth rate has dropped by 17 percent, with fertility rates falling by 21 percent. The replacement rate, the level needed for a population to sustain itself without immigration, is about 2.1 children per woman. The rate in America is 1.62 children per woman. The rate is even lower in European Union countries, below 1.5. The highest birth rate in the world is on the African continent, with nations there averaging 4.1 children per woman.
While past U.S. administrations and leaders in European Union countries have used the declining birth rate among the native population as an excuse to justify unfettered migration from poor southern hemisphere nations, the Trump administration is indicating interest in preserving the America that already exists. Trump has pledged to be “the fertilization president.” He said while speaking at a White House even celebrating Women’s History Month, “I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s not bad. I’ve been called much worse and actually, I like it.”
Same Goal, Different Reasons
Two of the biggest advocates in Trump’s circle for boosting the American birth rate are Vice President J.D. Vance and Elon Musk. During a speech in January at the March for Life, Vance said he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them. Vance has three children with his wife, Usha.
As for the tech tycoon, Musk has sounded much more apocalyptic in his baby-boom prescription. “Low birth rates will end civilization,” he said April 22 in an X post. Musk believes the real concern is population collapse, especially if humans hope to settle the next frontier. “If there aren’t enough people for Earth, then there definitely won’t be enough for Mars,” he has said, alluding to his lifelong dream of establishing a human presence on the Red Planet.
The Tesla titan has proved he’s willing to do his part. He has 14 children with four women, some conceived the natural way, others through in vitro fertilization (IVF). And he may not be done. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban said that he asked Musk how many children he planned on having. The reply he got was, “Mars needs people.”
Debate Growing
Vance and Musk agree that the nation needs more American children. However, debate is growing within pronatalist groups over how that should come about, especially when it comes to IVF and gene editing. Vance, a Catholic who is often seen with his children, represents the traditional faction of the pronatalist movement. This group is motivated by traditional religious values and sees a functional family as “the essential building block of society.” Musk, however, seems to be primarily concerned with creating enough people to keep the human species from dying out, to ensure economic dynamism, and, as already mentioned, to establish civilizations beyond earth.
Many haven’t bought into the globalists’ Malthusian overpopulation fear propaganda. They believe that the more humans there are, the more likely it is that dynamic individuals will emerge to contribute breakthroughs that will offset overpopulation concerns. This has proven true repeatedly. One of the most glaring examples comes from none other than the 18th-century English economist Thomas Malthus himself, who warned that if England, and the world, continued procreating at its then-current pace, the world would experience famine at unprecedented levels. As it turns out, the world population of the 21st century, about eight times as large, is far better fed than the people of Malthus’ time. Agricultural breakthrough has enabled humans to produce far more food than necessary to feed the entire world.
Why the Declining Birth Rates?
There are a number of reasons for declining birth rates. Mainstream media tends to focus on the economic ones. Raising children is expensive. And considering that the prices of everything — food, transportation, housing, energy — continue to rise, children have become unaffordable. While there is certainly an element of truth to this, it overlooks the fact that low-income Americans are having more children than their middle-class counterparts. Economic hardship is also not getting in the way of families in African nations, where they’re significantly poorer.
Other explanations fall into the culture category, which is almost certainly the primary reason for declining birth rates. While the Christian religion labels children a blessing, secular liberalism portrays children as a burden. Westerners are increasingly driven by career advancement, leisure, and other individualistic pursuits, all of which are hampered by children. Also, multiple waves of feminism have resulted in fewer women who want to be moms and more who want to excel in the workplace. The feminist ideology portrays motherhood as backwards and regressive, as being barely more than a “breeding” vessel.
As for the women who do want a family, it has reportedly become more difficult for them to find suitable men, highlighting another problem. Since the 1960s, America has been shipping manufacturing jobs overseas, jobs that used to make it possible for working men to support an entire family. America’s deindustrialization, along with the continuing erosion of the dollar made possible through the Federal Reserve’s money manipulation, has made it very difficult for one income to support an entire family.
Worldwide Issue
If the Trump administration does manage to deploy family-friendly policies, it wouldn’t be alone. Whether the government has any business interfering in cultural matters is a topic for another article.
Hungary has implemented among the most aggressive pro-traditional family policies. Under Viktor Orban’s leadership, Hungary has nationalized IVF clinics, given lifetime income tax exemptions to families for having four or more children, and offered loans for couples who promise to procreate, according to The Guardian:
One of these loans provides 10 million forint (£25,400) to young married couples. Each time a child is born, payments are deferred. If the couple have three children within the requisite timeframe, the loan is written off. If they don’t, they have to pay it back.
Poland and the Czech Republic also provide incentives for procreation.
Margaret Sanger
The pronatalist trend is antithetical to the anti-human, depopulation agenda that has dominated mainstream culture and policy for more than a century. A notable anti-human whose legacy continues to plague this nation is Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, the organization that primarily exists to murder unborn children. Sanger was also a eugenicist who believed certain people should not be procreating, including the “mentally defective,” the “moron,” and the “imbecilic.” In 1932, she described the population control program she wanted Congress to undertake. It included a “stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted,” as well as sterilizing people with transmissible diseases.
The Rockefellers
Another prominent population control advocate was the Rockefeller family. Through their Rockefeller Foundation, they started their anti-human efforts with $100 million in the early 20th century.
The Rockefellers’ depopulation agenda eventually influenced U.S. foreign policy. In 1974, under the direction of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger for President Richard Nixon, the government completed a report titled National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200): Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, otherwise known as the “Kissinger Report.” The report saw the incoming population bomb as a national security threat, and targeted 13 nations for population control efforts: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. As reported by Human Life International:
[The Kissinger Report] identifies four tools that can be used to slow the growth of a nation, with particular emphasis on its young population. These are:
- The legalization of abortion
- Financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates
- Indoctrination of children through sex education and propaganda
- Mandatory population control and coercion of other forms, such as withholding disaster and food aid unless an LDC [less-developed country] implements population control programs.
The report was written when overpopulation hysteria was once again rampant. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, in which, like Malthus a century before, he warned, “The most serious consequence for the short and middle term is the possibility of massive famines in certain parts of the world, especially the poorest regions.”
It’s obvious the ideas outlined in the Kissinger Report have since been deployed.
The U.S. government still operates the Office of Population Affairs, opened in 1970.
