What’s Behind the Trump Administration’s Push for More Children?
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Leslie McClurg in today for Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, the Trump administration wants a baby boom. It's backing ideas like a financial bonus for new moms, scholarships just for married parents, even classes to teach women when they are fertile. Supporters say the birth rate is too low and that without more babies, the economy could collapse.

Others say it's about reviving traditional family values. But critics argue it's a narrow vision, one that uplifts straight married couples and leaves out single parents and queer families. What does pronatalism mean for the future of American families? That's next after this news. Welcome to Forum. This is Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim. Happy belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there. I didn't become a mom until I was almost 40 years old.

I was just distracted, you know, prioritized work, travel. I waited for until the final moment. And now there's a growing movement that says people like me are part of the problem. If Americans don't start having kids earlier and a lot more of them, we won't have enough workers to support the economy, care for the elderly or to keep towns alive. It's called pro-natalism and it's gaining traction with the Trump administration. But

But critics say it's really just a call for more straight, married, and stay-at-home moms. Let's get into the details with Carter Sherman. She's a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian. I kind of breezed over a definition there, Carter, but how would you define pronatalism for someone who hasn't heard the term before? A lot of rhetoric and controversy around pronatalism, but not a lot of defining what it is.

Pronatalism can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But I think for the purposes of the discussion that's going on right now in U.S. politics, pronatalism is the belief that having babies is important to the greater good, that the state should incentivize people into having more babies, and that they should specifically be pursuing this incentive because of the declining birth rates in the United States. And where does this ideology come from and who is advancing it right now?

Well, traditionally, pronatalism is a right-wing ideology. And we see pronatalism in this moment being advanced, indeed, by the right wing. We see people like Josh Hawley or J.D. Vance talking about pronatalist talking points. Elon Musk is probably the most famous pronatalist on the planet at this point. He allegedly has 14 of his own children. And pronatalism, in my reporting, has really emerged as a kind of

plank in the ideological bridge between the more traditional family values conservatives and the emerging tech right that we're starting to see. And that might be represented by the folks over at, say, Doge. Well, let's bring in Faith Hill. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her recent article is titled The Pro-Family Policy This Nation Actually Needs. Faith, can you outline some of the proposals that are on the table that the Trump administration is considering that might help boost birth rates?

Yeah, absolutely. There's kind of a wide range of different policies that have been suggested to the administration. One of them is a $5,000 baby bonus for every new mother. There's also a plan to help women understand when they're ovulating, kind of education about menstrual cycles, etc.

There's an idea to give a portion of Fulbright scholarships, the international travel kind of prestigious fellowships that people can get to people who are married or who have kids. And there's even an idea for a national medal of motherhood for people who have six or more kids.

And then let's talk about Project 25. This is basically the right wing's wish list. It lays out a blueprint for pronatalism. What does it include, Faith?

Yes, it's very, very clear about who should be encouraged to have kids. It describes kind of, you know, an old fashioned version of the traditional family, a mother and a father who are married and have biological children. And, you know, it's very clear that that is kind of the type of family that

should be encouraged, which is actually, you know, no longer the majority of households in the United States. So it would really be kind of taking us back to a different era. And Carter, how popular is this movement and who is really paying attention?

While the right is really paying attention at this moment, I think among the general populace, I would not necessarily say that pronatalism is all that popular in this moment. We actually put out a study today, or The Guardian put out a poll today that showed that because of the economy, 65% of Americans are thinking of putting on hold their goals to have a child. So I think for generally, Americans aren't thinking about declining birth rates, they're thinking about their own pocketbooks and what they can afford to do.

I've been talking to many of the women who would theoretically be the target of pronatalist policies, young women who are in a reproductive age. And they're not saying to me that they feel a push by the government to have children. They're not saying that they feel like declining birth rates mean that they should have kids. What they're saying to me is that they're really worried about being able to even afford having a child and how having a child could really change all of their ability to achieve their life goals.

And Carter, what are some of the motivations? I mean, again, I breezed over it in the introduction to this conversation, but how are the supporters arguing that this is what we need? What are they saying why we need to do this? It's the declining birth rate is one of the main things that they're saying. The concern is that as birth rates decline in the United States, we are below the replacement rate, which is about 2.1, which means that every woman needs to be having two children about twice

to replace the current population. And they're worried that as the workforce shrinks and the workforce ages, we're not going to have a workforce that can support that elderly population. Now, the thing is that immigration could help offset that concern, but you would need a really different posture to immigration than what we're seeing the Trump administration come up with.

The other concern, and this is something that skeptics of pronatalism bring up a lot, is that do pronatalists really want all people to be having kids? And Faith has brought this up. Or are they just looking to have certain kinds of people having children? Which is to say, are they just looking to have white people have kids? Are they just looking to have straight and married people have kids?

And so that is the fear that lurking under this sort of overarching concern about the birth rate is a motivation to make the United States a whiter, straighter, more married and traditional nation. And you've written, Carter, that pronatalism often emerges during moments where we're experiencing more anxiety across the country. Can you give us some other historical examples?

Right. Well, here in the United States, pronatalism really surged at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, when we had more immigration coming in, where women were starting to gain more power in public life. President Theodore Roosevelt even talked about, quote-unquote, race suicide, by which he was referring to the number of white women who were going off to college and thereby delaying having kids. We also see pronatalism surge in places like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, where

Nazi Germany, for example, actually gave out medals to women who had many children. Faith, this whole administration, I looked at the numbers yesterday, I was kind of awestruck, really has large families. Like Carter mentioned, you know, Elon Musk has supposedly 14 kids. Sean Duffy has nine. RFK Jr. has six. President Trump has five.

Is this, in your opinion, really about population and the argument that they're making that this is about low birth rates? Or is this really about changing or creating a certain social order where men lead and women stay at home and the nuclear family really reigns on top?

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's at least partly the latter. I do think, you know, there are plenty of people in the administration and Republicans in Congress who do, you know, seem to be concerned with the birth rate. But I...

At the same time, you know, if the goal was really to just raise fertility rates, I think that there are a lot of people that the administration could be reaching out to who are really already yearning to have kids and just need sort of more support or more access to IVF.

And it doesn't seem like those are the people who are really going to be targeted by these policies, most likely. I mean, just as one example, you know, there's the number of single parents in the U.S. has been rising for years and growing.

A lot of people are struggling, I think, to find partners as more people identifying as singles has been a big shift. And a lot of those people are really dying to become parents but have not been able to find partners and don't.

necessarily have the funds to do it on their own or to access IVF. So there are ways that the administration could be raising the birth rate if that was kind of just the goal in and of itself, rather than to create a certain kind of family. We'd love to bring or hear from our audience. What's your reaction to what you're hearing about the pro-natalism movement?

Should the government have a role in encouraging people to have more children? What would incentivize you to have more kids? Email your comments, your questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on all the social platforms, Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Discord threads. We're at KQED Forum, or you can give us a call at 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786.

Rick writes, it should be up to a woman what she wants to do with her body, whether she wants to have children, more children or no children at all. Noelle on Discord writes, if the Trump administration was really pro-family, they would drastically raise the budget for Head Start, subsidize all child care centers in the country and give a larger family allowance on taxes. But it sounds like instead they are cutting child care funding so women are forced to stay at home with their kids. A $5,000 check ain't going to help much.

Carter, can you flesh that out a little bit more? I saw ProPublica had an investigation out. I think it was called Trump's War on Children and spoke to exactly what this person on Discord was writing about, which is that the Trump administration is not only not adding more child care, but cutting Head Start and other programs.

Well, the Trump administration has and Republicans have made major commitments to slash the budget. And the pro-natalist policies that they indeed are entertaining or some are proposing, those cost money. And so I fail to see how you can have, say, a $5,000 check, even if that is insufficient to really help most families, go out to families and also at the same time slash the budget.

We are also currently seeing, as this individual indicates, an interest in the Trump administration in cutting Head Start. We have seen an interest from the Trump administration in cutting Medicaid, which pays for more than 40 percent of all births. So it's hard to square that with real pronatalist priorities.

Glowy on Discord writes, when Trump was asked about making child care affordable, he responded by saying that tariffs are going to bring in trillions of dollars and that by comparison, by comparison, child care is cheap. Essentially, he was asked about child care and he took us on a stroll through his warped views on tariffs.

Ben on Discord writes, if Trump is citing the economy as a reason to worry about birth rates, I'd like to remind him that we have millions of talented workers waiting in line to come to the U.S. and contribute to the economy. Making childbirth and child care easier is a good way to enable people to make babies. But it's certainly not the cheapest or the easiest way to ensure our economy can continue to grow. And finally, Ernst writes, let's be clear, they're talking about white children only here.

Faith, in our final minute before we go to a break, any comments here in relation to what we're hearing from listeners? I mean, I think these are great points. And I think, you know, in particular, that last comment that this is particularly seems to be encouraging white families and I think also affluent and educated families. You know, marriage is the people most likely to get married are white.

and educated, and that definitely seems to be, you know, a part of the reason that two-family households often have sort of, you know, positive outcomes for kids, not just because marriage is kind of a magical fix. But we've definitely been seeing that, you know,

In the policies that the Trump administration is reviewing and the way that they're talking about pronatalism, raising the birth rate has been very tied up with raising the marriage rate. So I do think that that is telling in itself. We're talking about pronatalism and we'll be right back after this break. Stay with us.

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim. And we are talking about the baby boom that the Trump administration is considering, the pro-natalism movement. What's behind it? What's influencing it? What are the forces at play? We are joined by Carter Sherman, reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian and author of the upcoming book,

The Second Coming, Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future, and Faith Hill, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her recent article is titled The Pro-Family Policy This Nation Actually Needs. What's your reaction to what you're hearing about the pronatalism movement? Should the government have any role in encouraging people to have more children? And what would incentivize you to have more kids or to have kids at all? Are you a parent thinking of trying? What kind of support would you like to see?

You can email your comments, your questions to forum at kqed.org or find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Discord threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786. Let's go straight to the phones. Miriam in Vallejo, you're on the air.

Hi, as a mother of a toddler who gave up her 10 plus year career to be a mother, this pro-natalism topic really strikes home because how can this administration want women to be a mother?

bring all these babies into this world with such a really weak maternity leave program. That's my issue. Having, you know, being in a heterosexual relationship, married and trying to grow a family when I have to go back to work six to 12 weeks later, depending on the type of labor that I had. It's just not realistic. You have countries in Europe that have

year-long maternity leave programs with 90 to 80 percent salary guaranteed to these mothers. So they can have the time to nurture and bond with their child. Pronatalism has to be

you know, have to coincide with a maternity leave program that makes sense. How can you be a member of society having all these children and no income, especially when your household relies on dual income? Miriam, I feel you. Thank you for your call.

Carter, on that note, let's talk about more progressive countries who have pronatalist policies, you know, Japan, Finland. What are those countries doing? Yeah, Miriam brings up a really important point about maternity leave because the United States is the only industrialized country on the planet that does not have some kind of federally mandated parental leave. Places like Finland and Japan, you can spend a year or more and go back to your job or something close to it on maternity leave.

Finland actually also has very extensive public daycare as Japan. Finland even offers prenatal therapy for women who want to think about how to break issues of intergenerational trauma. So we could have a much more expansive social safety net out there for not only mothers, but parents. In fact, a study of 20 countries found that the more extensive the social safety net is, the more likely it was that parents are to be happy.

In that study found that parents in Finland are happier than non-parents, whereas non-parents here in the United States are more happy than parents. So these are the sorts of things that I think come up quite a bit when we think about, well, how can we convince people to have more kids? Can we make parenthood actually more appealing and more feasible?

I think, frankly, a lot about not just the quantity of the workforce, but the quality of the workforce. Again, if we're worried about workers leaving, what about making more space for women to go back to work and continue to flourish in their careers and contribute to the innovation of the American workforce that way? Faith, anything you want to add there? Yeah, I think it's such an important point. And I think, you know, just as Carter has been mentioning, it does seem like, you know,

A lot of the Republicans in Congress or people who are sort of putting forth suggestions for this administration are not so interested in helping with that. You know, they're introducing legislation that would effectively pay stay-at-home parents for their labor or would expand the child tax credit but get rid of tax breaks for working parents to use on daycare. So I think that there's a lot of movement towards that.

specifically encouraging families who have a stay-at-home parent. And of course, in most cases, that's going to be a stay-at-home mother. Let's go back to the phones. Thomas in Richmond, you're on the air. Hi. My initial point is basically to agree with a lot of what you're saying. But, you know, with increased birth rates, which is, you know, this administration's goal, I do think that nobody is really

questioning the quality of life we'll be able to achieve when we undertake that additional expense of more children. I mean, me personally, I have two children, and it's been the greatest challenge of my life. I mean, I've paid $56,000 for daycare in one year. And to me, there are nations that are like, you know, I'm listening to you and your comments about these Scandinavian countries. I also heard that Hungary was offering tax credit, or not credits, but

basically it was like a prorated reduction of your tax base based on how many children a woman would have. So if she made it to three children, she would pay no income tax for the rest of her life. And I don't know if they actually implemented that or if they were just considering it, but you're kind of sacrificing or at least making it much harder to build generational wealth if you have to divide what

what you amass through your lifetime among more children, and you have to take on the expense of educating them to the point where they could advance the wealth further. You know, these, it just seems like we're backsliding from the crest, the peak of, you know, like the pandemic where you had the mass resignation and you had workers dictating the terms and, you know, we're just,

We're trying to buy these cheaper cars and have more children, but they're not worried about us having nicer lives while we're doing it. Well, Carter, let's talk about what—I mean, I would love to talk about some of the parallels that are happening in other places.

More, I mean, he just mentioned there, Hungary, there's kind of these modern authoritarian states, Hungary and Russia, who have pronatalist policies. What's happening there? Right. So Hungary has a policy similar to the one you mentioned. I believe it's

After a woman has four children, she has a lifetime exemption from paying taxes. In fact, Hungary has devoted 5% of its GDP over the last few years to raising its falling birth rates. Russia has pro-natalist policies such as banning what they call child-free propaganda. What is interesting about all of these efforts in more right-leaning countries like Hungary and Russia and in more left-leaning countries like Finland is that actually we're not really seeing these policies result in increased births.

So it's not really clear what pronatalist policies even end up working to convince more people to have children. Instead, what we tend to find is that as a country industrializes, people choose to have fewer children or to have no children at all. And that just might be how it is. When people have more choices about how to live their lives because they have more money, they might make different choices.

However, there is some interesting thinking coming out of Japan, which is also dealing with the declining birth rate and has a pretty extensive social safety net program for mothers and babies, is that the concern is not necessarily about just giving people money. It's also about creating a system where they have more time. What if we created a

work days where it was more flexible for parents, where you could leave and go take care of your kids and come back and work on a schedule that worked for you. And we saw that during the pandemic, as this caller mentioned, where we had more flexible work-from-home policies. And so I think if you are very interested in not only raising the birth rate, but increasing quality of life, you know, those two things might be intertwined more than we like to think. Is there a connection between autocracy and pronatalism? I mean, you're just mentioning Hungary and Russia there. I'm curious, is there a connection?

Historically, yes. Historically, autocratic countries are interested oftentimes in keeping women in the home and setting very rigid gender roles. And pronatalism can be a part of that because what it does is, you know, childbearing, childrearing, those are not cost-free propositions. It takes quite a toll on women and it does oftentimes leave them in the home. These countries also oftentimes tend to have some kind of

ethno-nationalist perspective. They tend to have a racist perspective frequently. And so again, that leads to pronatalist postures towards having more white babies oftentimes. Let's go back to the phones. Claire in San Rafael, you're on the air.

Hi. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that I had my son living in Germany and it basically cost me to have him $50 a night for a hospital stay for like three nights. And that was it.

And then I had a full year off of work paid. It was reduced, reduced salary, but still it was a year with my child and like a really, you know, a really important time to create that bond and just care for him.

and I had job security, I knew I could go back. And then if we had stayed in Germany, essentially childcare would have been like $50 a month. I think just covering the cost of meals at daycare and the equivalent of preschool. So it's really nice to be home in California, but it just seems like

We could be doing better here if other countries are able to take care of families and women and children like this. You know, why can't why can't we do it here? Thank you, Claire. Faith, any response there to Claire? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a good reminder that a lot of these, you know, there is a real possibility of having having policies that work differently and having it be implemented.

sort of different creative solutions, I think, for how pronatalism could work. A lot of times it seems kind of unrealistic, but I think if there's different ways to think about...

what you could do. There's actually so many possibilities. One thing that's come up in my reporting is just that people really lean a lot on extended family, for instance, to help them raise kids, and especially in low-income families and Black and Latino families. So I've been talking to researchers who even, you know, said, like, what if we don't just help

But we also help the people that they're leaning on. And, you know, in Sweden, there's a possibility actually to kind of transfer paid leave to a grandparent who's helping out. So, yeah, I just I like the sort of help of the hopeful message that, you know, there are ways to really help people with this.

Ben on Discord writes,

On that note, Barbara writes, family as a symbol of stability and social control is pretty scary. I don't think this is about all Americans. If we wanted more babies and more families, shouldn't we embrace children born in this country, even to non-U.S. citizens?

Carter, any more you want to add about immigration and that possibility, where that lies in this conversation? I imagine that's pretty dead with this administration. Yeah, I don't know that I see a future where the Trump administration turns around and starts saying that immigration could be the solution to their concerns about declining birth rates.

I think that this has been something that researchers have brought up and basically said that if all of these countries are so worried about declining birth rates, there needs to be a change in their ideas about how immigration can and should work.

I did also want to bring up something that the caller who was in Germany brought up around the cost that she paid to give birth in Germany. You know, in the United States, it costs about $3,000 to give birth with an uncomplicated birth on private insurance, which is about the best case scenario probably for a U.S. family at that point.

That is higher than practically any other country on the planet. And so the question for my mind, particularly as I've been looking more into these policies that are going on in other industrialized countries in our peer nations, is does it need to be this way? Are there ways that we can be innovative and address the concerns that people have about declining birth rates while also catching up, frankly, to our peers on the rest of the planet?

Celeste writes,

However, she loves her job and I do too. If childcare was affordable, I would definitely go for it. And Josh writes, what is the stance of pro-natalism supporters on adoption? If the real goal is more children, shouldn't this also be a priority? Faith, do you know?

Yeah, I mean, I think that that is a great point. I think that the Trump administration isn't necessarily focusing on adoption. But, you know, when I was writing about sort of different non-traditional families that, you know, you could be supporting if you really have a sort of family forward policy, adoption came up a lot because, you know, there's a lot of couples and

This is big for a lot of gay parents who want to adopt and are looking to that for a way to begin their families.

And there's half a century of research on nontraditional families, including gay parents adopting, using IVF, single parents by choice, more recently even platonic co-parents, friends who are parenting together. And it really does show again and again that what's most important for kids' well-being is the quality of their relationships with family members and the degree to which they're accepted by the outside world.

And, you know, parents in nonconventional family structures even tend to be more involved than straight married parents on average, probably because they're, you know, more likely to have really deliberately chosen parenthood. So I think it's an important element of this story, especially because, you know, it's not easy to adopt. So I think it is really, you know, parents who are really,

really surmounting obstacles to start families in that way are pretty likely to be very dedicated. How is IVF? You mentioned it there. It's really kind of a battleground within this movement. Describe what's happening. Yeah, it's kind of a strange part of the story because, you know, on the one hand, Trump has suggested that he will try to make IVF more accessible. He's called himself, I think, was the fertilization president.

And his aides are reportedly working on, you know, recommending ways to make IVF more accessible and more affordable. But at the same time, the Trump administration has been cutting federal programs that research fertility, including some that track the success rates of different IVF clinics.

which is really important for oversight and knowing how IVF is working for families. It's also helpful for families who are looking into IVF for their own purposes. So it's really unclear what's going to happen with that. On the one hand,

pro-natalists who are trying to, you know, raise the birth rate, you would think they would want IVF to be easier for people. But some of these so-called pro-natalists are really trying to encourage a very specific sort of family, and that might be more important than the birth rate goal. For instance, you know, Project 2025 talks about IVF essentially being a last resort for

It's not encouraging IVF and encourages sort of, you know, other replacements that researchers are warning are really not as backed by science. And they're kind of talked about in this very context.

authoritative way in this report that is actually quite misleading. If I could... Yeah, yeah, please, Carter, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think the IVF piece, as Faith point out, is a really interesting part of the story. And I think, in fact, it's sort of the crack in the bridge between the pronatalists who are more traditional family values conservatives and the tech right, because the folks on the tech right are

They are oftentimes very pro-IVF because they see it sometimes as a way to create better babies. People like Malcolm and Simone Collins, who are sort of the avatars of the tech-rate pronatalist movement, they have been very open about their use of IVF.

Now, on the conservative, traditional conservative side, as Faith points out, people are more leery of it. And I think that oftentimes comes out of a concern about abortion and a concern about embryos being people. Because IVF, as it's currently practiced, often results in the destruction or the abandonment of embryos. And for the

pronatalists who are more traditional conservatives, they often have anti-abortion beliefs. They often believe that embryos are people. And so they're very worried about the way that IVF is practiced in this moment and want to dissuade people against that. Now that we're in a post Roe v. Wade world and the anti-abortion movement is looking for their next target, IVF is definitely at the top of their list. In like 20 seconds, what would happen if embryos were treated as humans, as people?

Oh my gosh, there's no way to do this in 20 seconds. Vast swaths of U.S. life would be totally, U.S. law would be totally rewritten. Basically what we tend to see is many instances of the rights of the fetus being pitted against the rights of the person who is carrying them. We are talking about pronatalism with Carter Sherman from The Guardian and Faith Hill from The Atlantic. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

Support for Forum comes from San Francisco Opera. Experience the soaring highs and heartbreaking lows of bohemian life this summer in John Caird's beloved production of La Boheme. Puccini's most adored opera transports us into the heady bohemian world of 19th century Paris as we follow a circle of starving artists falling in and out of love, living for the moment. La Boheme runs June 3rd to 21st. Learn more at sfopera.com.

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. And we are talking about pronatalism, which is the movement to replace or have more babies, to increase our birth rate. And what does that mean if the Trump administration is trying to have women have more babies? We are joined by Carter Sherman. She's a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian and Faith Hill, a staff writer for The Atlantic.

I'd love to hear from listeners. What's your reaction to what you're hearing about the pro-natalism movement? Should the government have a role in encouraging people to have more kiddos? Would a baby bonus, $5,000, would that motivate you to have a child?

Did you limit how many children you've had? Why did you do that? Email your comments, your questions to forum at kqed.org. Or you can find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or Discord threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call now at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786.

Carter, I wasn't very fair to you before the break there. Is there anything you want to say more? I asked you whether or not, what would happen if embryos were treated as people? Anything else you want to expand on? There is so much to get into on that. That is a whole other hour. But I think what is important to keep in mind here is that it can, if fetuses and embryos are treated as full people, this can end up in situations where women are persecuted for conduct that would not have been seen as wrongful if they were not pregnant. We

We have, in fact, seen thousands of cases since Roe v. Wade in 1973 where women were criminalized or lost their liberty because they did something that was seen as wrong because they were pregnant. And so I think pronatalists oftentimes are aligned with the anti-abortion movement. I've been in many anti-abortion spaces where they frequently talk about really wanting people to have more babies, where they...

really talk about, like, does we want more babies? J.D. Vance said as much at the March for Life earlier this year. But in fact, pronatalism and fetal personhood, as it's called, could be seen as contradictory because people get scared to get pregnant if they feel like their fetus could lead them to be imprisoned or worse.

David writes, just like everything else that has come out of this administration, this is not well thought out and it's completely performative. It is clear that they are not doing anything to make it easier or less expensive to raise a kid. They are getting exactly what they wanted. The right wing media talking about the great ideas coming from this administration.

A listener on Instagram writes, having a child is a serious matter, both financially and physically. I think women cannot be mothers, full-time employees, and at-home chefs and caregivers and not go nuts. In Sweden, the maternity period for mothers is four years, and they keep your job for that period. Working full-time and paying full-time child care makes you broke here. I decided not to.

I decided to have only one child when I can afford to stay home and raise that child, which looks like never. Faith, is that true? Is Sweden, is the maternity period really four years? You know, I'm not totally sure exactly what the answer to that is, but I definitely think it's right that there's very different policies in a lot of different countries and it's not need to look like how it is in the U.S. Carter, anything you want to add about what's happening in other countries?

Yeah, I also couldn't confirm that it's exactly four years in Sweden. I do think that it can be multiple years. There are research to show that taking that much time off can be very beneficial, not only for the baby and the mother, but even for her career flourishing after that. Specifically, in fact, taking a year can be really helpful, and those women can return back to work without having a major interruption in their careers or their workflow.

Let's go back to the phones. Isaac in Novato, you're on the air. Hi. So my comment is basically the taxation policies in the United States where the super-rich don't pay any taxes is the key to the solution. If the super-rich, the 1%, paid their fair share of taxes, all these problems would disappear and mothers, women,

would be able to stay at home, raise children if they so desired, or men could stay at home, raise healthy, adjusted children, and everything that Republicans are talking about, the crazy solutions, would not have to be addressed. Those are my comments. Thank you, Isaac.

Susan writes, Faith, would you agree?

I definitely think that there's a lot of evidence that the Trump administration is interested in a more so-called traditional family structure that, yeah, a lot of times looks like women being back in the home. And I think, you know, based on the sort of policy suggestions that we've talked about already, that seems evident.

There's not been suggestions on the table for federally funded child care, which would be helping more parents, including women, to work. And I also just think, you know, you can get a sense of this from just the kind of rhetoric that the Trump administration uses when they talk about this. I mean, Carter mentioned this.

J.D. Vance's speech at the March for Life. And I think that's a good example because he said during that talk that he wants, quote, beautiful young men and women having more kids. So I do think they're not really being so shy about who they want to be having kids and growing their families. Let's go back to the phones. Rob in San Francisco, you're on the air.

Thank you. Yeah, the financial situation was a big factor for us living in San Francisco where money was tight. And it's not just childcare when your kid is an infant or when they're very young before they go into school, but during summer when they're in school, you have to figure out camps and you have to figure out, you know, vacations when the daycare center goes on break. And there's so many factors involved.

into the childcare situation that if they made childcare affordable or free, that would have been a huge factor in why we only had one kid. But the way it is, we just couldn't afford to have a second one. And, you know, it's just this reality.

I hear you, Rob. Thank you for sharing that. A listener on Discord writes, addressing the falling birth rate is just dressing the wound while ignoring the knife still lodged in the body. As long as we allow the private corporate sector to write the rules of governance, we will never address the systemic pressures that make people delay or reject parenthood, stagnant wages, precarious employment, and unaffordable housing.

Catherine writes, this is the wrong conversation. We need to be limiting population growth, as is we're using too many of the Earth's resources. Carter, any comment there?

I mean, I think that that is a very that's an emerging opinion that people have. I mean, we're not necessarily seeing the Trump administration take climate change seriously. And I think, you know, I did a piece right after Trump went off. I was talking to people about how the how his victory was changing their family planning ideas. And the number one thing that people brought up to me was the climate. They were really worried about what it would mean to raise kids in.

in a world that seems to be dying. And that's the language that they use with me. They would be walking outside on the phone while we talked and they would talk about seeing the trees turn color or change color at the wrong times and just feeling like it was not ethically right to have more children at this time. Let's go back to the phones. Bennett and Alameda, you're on the air.

I think kind of following up on some previous callers, like, this is very much a Christian nationalist ideology, right? Like, as people talked about sort of, you know, immigrant children or children of immigrants, like, this administration wants white Christian babies, and it ties directly in with the, you know, how closely tied they are with Christian nationalism. So thank you for taking my call. Yeah, thank you for calling in, Bennett.

Carter, what's the risk of letting pronatalism shape national policy unchecked?

Well, I think this raises two thoughts for me. First of all, I do think it's important to point out, as Faith and I have talked about, is that we're not actually in a position in this country right now where we are seeing real pronatalist policies take hold. There's all of this talk of pronatalism and all these policies that are getting thrown around, but we're not seeing them implemented at this time because so many of them cost money and the Republicans have said that they would like to slash the budget.

And so what is very interesting is I think pronatalism itself as a word can be sort of a Rorschach test. People on the left hear it and they panic, blurs. People on the right see some of these headlines about it and think, oh, Republicans are pro-family. And so even this belief that Republicans are pushing for pronatalism, that can be a PR move by Republicans.

that they don't necessarily have to follow up on by really implementing the kind of costly pronatalist policies that they are debating at this time. So I don't know that we're really in a place where pronatalism is running amok. However, if we were to be in that place and if that is the ideology that's taking hold right now, I think the concern is that we're going to be in a situation where only particular kinds of babies are really being prioritized and other people are being left out in the cold. It seems like many of the people behind pronatalist policies

ideology, really want to see whiter families, straighter families, married families, and yeah, oftentimes more Christian families. Faith, do you think any of these policies that are being floated by the administration are going to work? I mean, do you think there are women out there that will jump at the opportunity to get a $5,000 bonus?

I think, you know, $5,000 is better than no aid. So I don't think, you know, all of these policy suggestions are inherently bad. I think, you know, some of them seem kind of strange or misguided and something like that $5,000 baby bonus just doesn't really seem like enough. I mean, it's been said before, but I think $5,000 is just, it feels like a very tiny band-aid on a very large wound.

Let's go to the phones. Petra in Oakland, you're on the air.

Hi, good morning. This is not, not a joke, but have you ever thought about how they would limit the gene pool of having beautiful white Christian straight babies? How inbreeding would affect us? I mean, anybody in a better puppy mill knows not to do that. I mean, we don't even have a healthcare system to catch whatever might be coming our way there. And as I said, it's not, not a joke. It's a joke, but not, you know, it's,

Wow. I think it's a good point, Petra. Carter, any thoughts there? I don't know that perennials have really brought this up as a concern. I mean, maybe I just have not come across it. I do think that

One of the things that we're going to start to worry about is, and that many callers I think have already brought up, is like who can get ahead in this country? Are opportunities really available to all? And if we create a more insular society, are we really upholding some of the promises that I think people associate with the United States? You're listening to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim.

We are talking about pronatalism, what it is, how it might affect American families, and the Trump administration's push for a baby boom. We are joined by Carter Sherman. She is a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian and author of the upcoming book,

The second coming, sex and the next generation's fight over its future. And Faith Hill, staff writer for The Atlantic, her recent article is titled The Pro-Family Policy This Nation Actually Needs. We'd love to hear from you. You can email your comments, your questions to forum at kqed.org. What do you think of what you're hearing? What would incentivize you to have kids or more kids? Are you a parent thinking of trying?

Give us a call at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786. Faith, we've touched on it in various parts of this conversation, but really clearly, the title of your article, what does our country really need in terms of reproductive policy?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as we've talked about, there's a lot of disagreement about whether raising the birth rate should really be the, you know, the goal here. But I do think if that is the goal, my argument is that we should be trying to reach the kinds of families that are already starting to form and the people who are already wanting to have kids who are facing barriers to that. And so that, you know, involves families.

Thinking about single people who are struggling to find co-parents, even if they'd really like to, and how we could help them have kids and be able to raise those kids with good quality of life.

And so that does involve making IVF more accessible. But I also think, you know, it has a lot to do with supporting families and supporting the kinds of people who support them. So whether that's thinking about how to draw in extended family members and help them as well, or, you know, whether it means a kind of solution that might seem really out of the box.

now, but something like, you know, encouraging people to start leaning on their friends to have kids. There's, you know, more research now about friends who are raising kids together. And it does seem like those kids are doing just fine. So I do think, you know, thinking about meeting people where they're at and what people actually need who want to have kids could go a long way. Let's sneak in one more call before the end of the hour. Al in Berkeley, you're on the air.

Hi there. Project 2025 seems to me to be partially a project by which business owners in this country can run businesses with little or no accountability. And if you run a school or a daycare, you have concerned parents coming at you all the time, and you have to take responsibility. And so it seems to me there's little interest in the business class of this country in running these kinds of businesses.

But on the other hand, if you run a prison, you get a lot less pushback on how it's operated because the public, for the most part, doesn't care about this population. So we are a country that builds prisons and not schools. And if you defund public education, you get a population who's predisposed to a future of either obedient service workers or...

You know, the incarceration class, for lack of a better word. So that's that's this country. I think that's what it appears. Thank you, Al. Carter, any comments there?

I guess I think it is always very much worth thinking about the business investment in these sort of structures around parents. I mean, if you think about it, there are companies that many tech companies, for example, that offer extended parental leave that is on par with the leave that people just get from the government in other countries. And so those countries can kind of like hold.

like hoard parental leave as a benefit that then other people at other companies don't get. And they can use that benefit to entice better workers to their company. So it is worth thinking about like what investment does business have in maybe not making child care a public good. Private equity is also heavily invested in child care companies at this point. And they might also have an interest in not making government funded child care available. And so I think

I think when thinking about the things that people have told me would be very helpful for them, they've talked about better, more affordable health care. They've talked about publicly funded child care or at least less expensive child care. And they've talked about expanding parental leave. And it's always worth looking at, well, who are the people who are not necessarily interested in helping Americans get those things? And what are their interests instead? Why do you think the Trump administration, those ideas are falling on deaf ears? I mean, these people have a ton of kids now.

I mean, many of them also have a lot of money and they can afford to have those kids in ways that middle class Americans can't really afford to do so. Sapna writes, "One thing missing from this conversation is what motherhood is and how it is defined. That it is defined by patriarchy and the emotional toll it takes on women." A listener on Blue Sky writes, "Raising children in this country is truly a thankless and selfless task.

I admire anyone who takes it on. I agree as a mother myself. We are talking about the pro-natalism movement. We've been joined by Carter Sherman. She's a reproductive health and justice reporter at The Guardian, author of the upcoming book, The Second Coming, Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future. And Faith Hill, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Faith's recent article is titled, The Pro-Family Policy This Nation Actually Needs. Thank you both so much for joining us. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts.

Thank you. Thank you. One final comment from a listener. This is more white Christian nationalist anti-immigrant propaganda by the Trump administration. It's a strategy to populate the U.S. with more of their own. They will surely tweak this policy to exclude people of color. We got lots of comments like that. So I just wanted to close on that because that seems to be one major permeating thought through our listeners listening to this conversation. Thank you all so much for joining us this morning. Have a wonderful day.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Support for Forum comes from San Francisco Opera. Experience the soaring highs and heartbreaking lows of bohemian life this summer in John Caird's beloved production of La Boheme. Puccini's most adored opera transports us into the heady bohemian world of 19th century Paris as we follow a circle of starving artists falling in and out of love, living for the moment. La Boheme runs June 3rd to 21st.

Learn more at sfopera.com. Hey, it's Glenn Washington, the host of the Snap Judgment podcast. At Snap, we tell cinematic stories that let you feel what it's like inside someone else's skin. Stories that let you walk in someone else's footsteps. Storytelling like you've never heard before.

The highs, the lows, the joys, the pain, the twists, the turns, the laughs, the life. Snap Judgment drops each and every week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jorge Andres Olivares and I'm hosting a new show, Hyphenacion. Unlike many other hyphenated Latinos in the U.S., our cultures and our communities inform our choices, like with money. We had that pressure to be the breadwinner. Religion. I just think Jesus was what we would now define as Christ.

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