‘Pronatalism’ is an insidious ideology cloaked in economic policy speak. Last week Trump’s team talked about women being ‘under-babied’ in the States. But is it getting a foothold in NZ?
OPINION
A week ago, surgeon turned talk-show host and lifestyle guru, Dr Mehmet Oz, stood beside the Oval Office desk for a press conference, while Trump opened his eyes occasionally. The occasion marked the launch of moms.gov, a government website that the Guardian called an anti-choice hub that misleads women.
Dr Oz mentioned a move to make fertility treatments more accessible, including through TrumpRx, an online marketplace for discounted prescription drugs. “So,” Dr Oz said, “let me speak about the reality, that one in three Americans are under-babied. What does under-babied mean? That means that you either don’t have children or you have less children than you would normally want to have.” Normally? There’s nothing normal about this press conference, sir. Especially when you say there is going to be a wave of “Trump babies”.
Insert vomit emoji here, please.
The idea of a ‘Trump baby’ may put non-MAGA Americans off procreating at all. Also, if only Trump’s parents had been under-babied…
How’s this for irony? Dr Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, went on to praise Trump for “saving Medicaid”, despite his administration making severe cuts to the program. He didn’t mention that they were cutting spending on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits by more than $1 trillion. Lucky Trump babies!
A video about being ‘under-babied’ – posted on X by a singer, songwriter and artist who goes by the name Bossi (and describes herself as a woman losing every ounce of patience – is bang on and funny. “Under-babied? Honey, women aren’t factories and children aren’t inventory.”
What is it Exactly?
Pronatalism is a belief or policy position that encourages higher birth rates. You know, we need more babies who will grow up to pay taxes and all that. But pronatalism is more than this. This is how the Observer Research Foundation describes it: “Pronatalism often comes wrapped in visions of a certain kind of society that leaders wish to promote. Frequently, it is a socially conservative vision: a return to traditional gender roles, heterosexual marriage, and a higher birth rate among the ‘right’ sort of citizens.”
A few days ago I spoke to leading U.K.-based cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn about her book Women’s Work: Reclaiming The Radical History of Mothering (look out for that story soon).
Elinor writes that right-wing pronatalist ideologies have, in recent years, been gaining traction in the U.K. “Pronatalism, which is endemic in religious and social conservativism, is an anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQIA+, patriarchal project, rooted in racist anxieties about the depletion of ‘white national’ populations.”
We talked a bit about this. “Currently, there’s all this debate and discussion about a so-called fertility crisis, or birth-rate crisis,” she tells me, adding that it’s important to look at the political agendas that constructs like these are serving, and have served, throughout history. That stretches right back to Rome’s first emperor Augustus’ pronatalist campaign two millennia ago.
Exactly two millennia later, a wannabe emperor is telling women to have more children. As Elinor writes, “rather than commit to making sure that no mothers living in a country with the largest economy in the world struggle for their and their children’s dignity and survival, the current US administration is fixated on retrenching patriarchal ideals of reproduction and family-making. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Republican leaders unabashedly denigrated child-free women, solo mothers and parents who identify as lesbian, gay, trans and non-binary. Through their disturbing proposals to incentivise and support bearing and raising children only within so-called ‘healthy family formation’ – meaning the heterosexual, male-headed family – they meant to curtail mothering and parenting by people who do not serve their extreme right-wing agenda.”
Elinor tells me she’s appalled by Dr Oz’s new word ‘under-babied’, particularly by the stigmatising of childfree women. “The American administration now has this Moms.gov website as well, which is like a MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] website that gives all this kind of hokey advice – things like, you know, mums probably shouldn’t work.” Kind of like the TradWife movement? “It’s very much like the TradWife movement but a pronatalist version.”
And it’s not just the U.S. and U.K. A 2025 academic paper called ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pronatalism: A Disingenuous Policy that Harms the Health of People and Society’ states that pronatalist policies are on the rise in many countries. “No matter the stated motivation, government-sanctioned pronatalism overtly leads to reproductive coercion or covertly results in limited reproductive autonomy as collateral damage.”
What About in NZ?
What happens in the U.S. and U.K. absolutely has a trickle-down effect Downunder. Talk about pronatalism is getting louder in New Zealand, largely through the voices of white, conservative people. Remember when Luxon (a Christian who thinks abortion is murder, by the way) told us to have more babies, then tried to pass it off as a ‘joke’?
A few days ago, in a session of Parliament, Labour’s Phil Twyford asked whether National supported or opposed immigration-fuelled population growth. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford replied: “We are not producing enough babies in this country to ensure that we have a stable or even growing population. We are going to rely on migration.” You get the feeling she’d prefer the former. She said the issue was “very serious”. Is it just a coincidence that she said this just a few days after Dr Oz’s comments?
Sure, you can argue that we need to create babies who will grow up to pay taxes and pay for our superannuation. But is this the only solution? How about reducing ageism so capable older people can get and stay in work? What’s wrong with the immigration solution – that the immigrants mainly aren’t white? Could we even have economic models that aren’t obsessed with hyper-capitalist economic growth and population growth?
If governments want us to have more babies, perhaps they could make it viable. Better fund or fully fund early childhood education. Offer longer parental leave, including some dedicated solely to the father. Pay new parents a lump sum to help with initial costs. Fund mental healthcare support for mothers and pregnant women. There are just some initial thoughts.
Here are some thoughts from a people commenting in a r/newzealand Reddit thread called ‘We’re not having enough babies’: Immigration minister triggers raucous response during question time’.
- The immigration minister, who is part of a government making things harder for us to live, thinks we’re not having enough babies. Go figure.
- Can confirm: want kids but can’t afford it.
- We are laser-focused on increasing fertility rates. That’s why we have f**ked the economy, degraded workers’ rights and given landlords tax breaks. That’ll fix it. Right?
- How, if young people cannot find a job or are paid like sh*t while inflation has skyrocketed, can they afford to raise kids? You gotta be kidding me.
- Couldn’t tell you many times I have seen someone on the right say ‘don’t have kids if you can’t afford them’ when arguing against welfare.
- Maybe if there were tax incentives, housing incentives, work training incentives for new parents and community incentives centred around kids – then yeah, people may have more kids.
- If daycare didn’t cost $300 a week per kid for 2.5 years, it would make having more kids a lot more enticing.
- Maybe make it so people like myself and my partner, who are physically and emotionally ready to have kids, can actually do so without sliding back into poverty. I’m tired of waiting for things to get better but I’ll rip my own uterus out with kitchen tongs before I allow myself to have a kid who can’t be properly cared for.
- It’s obvious the connection between The Handmaid’s Tale and MAGA. What we’re really good at ignoring down here in NZ is that we’re on the same path.
Let’s not let that happen.
