President Trump likes the idea of a Baby Boom. He is calling himself “the fertilization president,” a far-fetched claim that matches his earlier boast that he’s “the father of IVF.” Trump declares that he wants more babies, but the man who’s never changed a diaper is only interested in babies born to white, married, heterosexual couples.
Talk is cheap, but when it comes to the president’s record, he is promoting everything except programs that actually help families in need. There is a vast difference between being pro-birth and being pro-life.
His vice president, J. D. Vance, was inspired earlier when visiting Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Vance discovered Hungarian couples receive a generous baby bonus. Women under 40 are eligible for a free loan of 10,000 florints (around $35,000 U.S.) that need not be paid back if they have three or more children. If they have four children, they are exempt from personal income tax for life. Hungary offers other benefits: help buying cars and housing, free day care, and kindergarten access.
Hungary instituted this family-oriented program in response to that nation’s falling birthrate. But, despite spending around 5 percent of its gross national product on the effort, Hungary hasn’t experienced a turn-around. On the contrary, the country’s birthrate has fallen from 1.51 births per woman to 1.3 births, which is well below replacement levels.
Hungary’s continuing birthrate decline apparently escaped Vance’s notice. Upon returning from his 2021 trip, Vance gave a speech in Virginia lauding Orban’s program and asking, “Can’t we do it here?” The vice president now supports the U.S. paying a baby bonus, a suggested $5,000 payment to birth mothers after delivery. Other suggested proposals include child tax credits and setting aside one-third of Fulbright grants for married couples who have children. Meanwhile, Vance has tarred career women who don’t have kids as “childless cat ladies.”
But if increasing births is a Trump aim, it is hard to imagine worse incentives for having babies than the contradictory actions of his administration. Not only has President Trump allowed Elon Musk’s DOGE to chainsaw federal programs that provide day care and Head Start. He has also appointed officials like Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent childhood-vaccine skeptic. Instead of backing immunization for serious diseases like measles, Kennedy is promoting vitamins, healthy eating, and cod liver oil.
Then there’s Trump’s recommended 2026 budget. Along with tax cuts for the wealthy, his budget proposal calls for massive increases in military spending while slashing health, education and clean energy programs.
Add that to the chaos of Trump tariffs. His ill-considered proposals are affecting everything necessary for babies: strollers, car seats, playpens, baby food, and formula. Once-busy ports of entry like Seattle and Tacoma have seen a dramatic cutback in cargo shipments.
Although Trump once claimed he hadn’t read the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 blueprint, he now appears to be implementing it along with pronatalism. At last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump was keen on natalist plans. He declared, “You men are lucky out there.” It was a crude and unsubtle reference to how government policy could embrace men’s sex lives.
Others have gone further. At the NatalistCon in Austin, Texas, a yearly event first held in 2023, speakers blamed the nation’s declining birthrate on feminism and urged women to forfeit careers and be subordinate to men. Speaking at the event was Jack Posobiec, known for his bizarre Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
The pronatalist movement has attracted backers from various sectors. Some are religious, such as those who believe in large families like the Catholics and Mormons. Others are there for political reasons, convinced that having more babies is “the only way to save civilization.” The tech sector has true believers like Elon Musk who has fathered 14 or more children with different women. Musk has some curious ideas such as his backing for C-sections. He’s convinced babies born by C-section have bigger brains than those birthed by vaginal delivery.
The pronatalists are a very white crowd with devotion to misogyny, white superiority, and eugenics. They want to limit abortion and contraception and make divorces harder to obtain. Jay Richards of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, urged the federal government to not only pay a birth bonus but to allocate more money for each additional child.
Trump has been paying lip service to the pronatalists. He keeps saying he favors a baby boom; but he steers clear of family-friendly policies. In his usual shambolic fashion, many of his policies – like his cavalier lack of concern over creating a recession – are antithetical to a baby boom. Policies he’s promoting are more likely to deliver a “Baby Bust.”
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