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The pronatalists have entered the White House.
Last week, news broke that the Trump administration was considering a variety of policies to get Americans to have more kids, inspired by figures like Elon Musk (who has 14 known kids) and activists Simone and Malcolm Collins (who have four but want as many as 10). Those suggestions, which included a $5,000 baby bonus and a “National Medal of Motherhood” uncomfortably reminiscent of Nazi Germany, triggered immediate backlash. Many wondered how any of them would actually help parents, at a time when $5,000 only covers a few months of child care in some places.
Today, however, I want to look at pronatalist policies through a slightly different lens: whether they benefit kids. People who want to boost birth rates generally talk about the importance of children to society as a whole: We need more kids, they often say, to pay into Social Security and take care of us when we’re old. But what about the kids themselves? Are pronatalist policies, and pronatalism in general, in their best interest?
In some cases, these questions can be easily answered with data. In others, they’re more about values. Is a world with more kids inherently better for kids? Is championing childbirth the best way to show kids that they’re valued? The answers to these questions are complex, but the experts I spoke to were clear about one thing: If the United States aims to be a pro-child country, we have a long way to go.
The idea that really helps kids
Of all the pronatalist policies reportedly under consideration, one is straightforwardly good for kids, experts told me. That would be the one where the government gives parents money.
Five thousand dollars may not pay for day care — and it may not substantially boost birth rates — but it could be enough to allow a parent to stay home for a few more weeks with a new baby, said Karen Guzzo, a family demographer and director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That extra leave would benefit baby and parents alike, research suggests.
The money could also help defray the costs of a birth (often expensive even with insurance) and of necessities like car seats and strollers (which could be about to go up in price). If it helps keep families solvent during a time of financial upheaval, a baby bonus could benefit children in the long run, since financial stability is good for kids’ health and learning. “I’m all for giving families money,” Guzzo said.
In fact, a similar policy already had impressive results. During the Biden administration, the American Rescue Plan expanded the child tax credit from a maximum of $2,000 to between $3,000 and $3,600 per child per year, and made it fully available to poor families. As a result, child poverty dropped to the lowest level on record, and the number of kids going hungry appeared to decrease as well.
However, the expanded child tax credit lapsed at the end of 2021, and child poverty immediately spiked again. Republicans are reportedly interested in bringing the expanded credit back, but the path for any legislation remains unclear. For now, “it is frustrating to hear that we are thinking of giving one-time bonuses when we already had a plan that worked” to reduce child poverty, “and we got rid of that,” Guzzo said.
Is it better to be one of many?
Other policies reportedly under consideration, like giving a medal to moms with more than six children or reserving a certain percentage of Fulbright scholarships for married people or parents, are unlikely to do much of anything for kids or birth rates, according to Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who studies demographic trends.
But more broadly, it’s worth thinking about whether the pronatalist project in general — producing more births — is good for children.
Some observers argue that certain countries with low birth rates have become actively anti-child. In South Korea, for example, hundreds of restaurants, museums, and other public spaces bar children from entering. These “no-kids zones” make life difficult for parents, who have begun to campaign against them, but they arguably limit kids’ opportunities to enjoy and learn about the world as well.
“We don’t fund school systems, we don’t fund child care, we do not fund leave programs. We are so not pro-family in the United States.”
— Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at UNC at Chapel Hill
If pronatalism led to more children and therefore more tolerance of children in public space, or even to child-friendly urban design, it could benefit kids. For example, child-centric neighborhoods where kids were able to “flow out their doors” and form “their own little society” would be both fun for kids and beneficial for them as adults by potentially making them more self-sufficient and able to advocate for themselves, Trent MacNamara, a history professor at Texas A&M University who has written about fertility rates, told me.
Some experts worry about the decline of autonomy and free play among children today, and for MacNamara, it’s possible to imagine that having more children around could bring some of that freedom back. “Maybe if you do build a more child-centered society, it’s easier for parents to think of kids as running their own show,” he said.
There are also intangibles to think about — the joys (and trials) of growing up with a lot of siblings, or a lot of cousins, or as part of a big generation. Having a lot of kids around helps both adults and other children get in touch with “their wilder side” and “let go a little bit,” MacNamara said.
However, because pronatalism often goes hand in hand with patriarchal values, it’s not necessarily great for the roughly half of children who happen to be girls, Cohen noted.
It’s also not completely clear that a world with more births is always a better one for kids. Around the world, “the decline of fertility has been a key part of rising living standards” for kids and adults alike, Cohen said. Fewer kids can mean more resources per kid — for example, falling birth rates in the US are one reason that state and local governments have been able to expand publicly supported preschool.
Birth rates falling below a certain point could be bad for kids — if, for example, their schools close. But when it comes to policy, the most pro-child ideas aren’t necessarily the ones advocates typically bring up to increase birth rates. Kids need food, housing, health care, and education, and they need “the confidence that those things will be there for them in the future, and that their families will be there for them in the future,” Cohen said.
Policies that would bring stability to parents and kids include robust paid leave, access to health care before and after birth, and subsidized high-quality child care, Guzzo told me. Some pronatalists have pushed for such supports, but right now, they feel out of reach in many parts of the country.
“We don’t fund school systems, we don’t fund child care, we do not fund leave programs,” Guzzo said. “We are so not pro-family in the United States.”
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As always, you can share your experiences, ask questions, or propose future topics at anna.north@vox.com.
