Latest news with #pro-natalist
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Can Nigel Farage boost Britain's birth rate?
As Sir Keir Starmer continued to drag his feet over one of the most contentious policy issues among Labour MPs and voters, Nigel Farage spotted an opportunity. Proclaiming during a speech last week that Britain had 'lost our sense of focus of just how important family is', the Reform UK leader unveiled plans to lure frustrated Labour voters while also attempting to arrest a decline in the UK's birth rate. Farage pledged that an elected Reform would scrap the two-child benefit cap and introduce a transferable tax allowance for married couples, in a bid to encourage people to have children. 'This is part of a bigger package and policy that we are putting together to try and make the family a more important element in British life,' said Farage. It marks the party's move into pro-natalist policies. This embedded content is not available in your region. Reform's proposed transferable tax allowance for married couples takes inspiration from central Europe. During his time in office Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, has placed significant focus on the importance of birth rates and traditional families. Earlier this week, Farage said he was 'not moralising' on the significance of marriage and added that having been divorced twice his 'track record was not so good on this'. Reform's policy would exempt one partner in a marriage from paying tax on the first £25,000 of their salary. Ben Ramanauskas, a senior fellow in economics at the Policy Exchange, says the proposal would bring the UK 'into a territory where most European countries are'. He adds: 'They have a much more generous system when it comes to taxing households and families.' However, Ramanauskas cast doubt on the idea that the measure could encourage couples to have children: 'The proposal itself won't have much of an impact on what Farage is aiming for in terms of hoping to increase the birth rate.' Reform's plans also miss out a key group of would-be parents. More than half of children in the UK are born to couples out of wedlock. So with the transferable tax allowance only reserved for married couples, the baby boosting effect of the policy is unclear. The party has also said it would scrap the two child benefit cap, a pledge which is estimated to cost £3.4bn, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Tomáš Sobotka, deputy director at the Vienna Institute of Demography, says abolishing the cap would help to lift children out of poverty but its impact on Britain's birth rate is likely to be 'marginal'. 'Most parents today don't desire more than two kids so it's a select group of women and families who are having a third or a fourth child,' he says. 'Providing a bit more in services … will not change fertility planning among many couples.' In Hungary, Orbán's attempts to fix the country's birth crisis mean it spends around 5pc of its GDP on measures aimed at encouraging couples to have children. The most significant of these measures is the country's large tax breaks. Currently mothers under 30 pay no income tax and mothers with three or more children are exempt from paying income tax for life. Orbán has also pledged to extend the measure to mothers of two children by January 2026. The government also offers loans to newly-weds that can be partially or fully written off if the couple has two or three children – as well as subsidies for family car purchases and housing. Despite Orbán's significant spending and hopes of a baby boom, Hungary's birth rate stood at 1.52 children per woman in 2022, in the UK it was 1.53 children per woman in 2021. For context, a country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to ensure it has a stable population, without immigration. 'In the last few years Hungary has experienced fertility declines to the same extent as other countries and it now has exactly the same fertility rate as the European average ... from that perspective Hungarian policies are not bringing in tremendous success,' says Sobotka. But Orbán's focus on large families is helping to deliver an uptick in the number of households with three or more children, Sobotka adds. In the Nordics, the picture isn't any clearer. Finland pioneered the introduction of family friendly policies including parental leave and childcare from the 1980s onwards. The country reported a rise in its birth rates in the 1990s despite going through a financial crisis. 'Introducing these kinds of policies if they are long term … longer parental leave and especially affordable childcare have been shown in a wealth of studies both in the Nordic countries and from other countries to be associated with somewhat higher fertility,' says Anna Rotkirch, of the Family Federation of Finland's Population Research Institute. However, she warns these measures 'are not enough for today's situation,' and that 'there's no silver bullet policy.' Indeed, the initial boost to Finland's birth rate in the late 20th century has waned and since 2010 the country has seen its birth rate decline by a third. Yet, Rotkirch says that while government spending and Reform's proposed policies might not have much of a demographic impact they were an important element in reducing child poverty. 'The cost of parenting is real and it is also economic,' she adds. 'Why do we have a society where you get poorer if you have a child?' Over in South Korea the picture is even more challenging. In May 2024, the then-president Yoon Suk Yeol asked for the parliament's cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning. 'We will mobilise all of the nation's capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,' he said. The country has gone through a raft of measures including baby bonuses, subsidised fertility treatments and housing assistance but the country's fertility rate stood at 0.78 children per woman in 2024. Melinda Mills, a professor of demography at Oxford University say: 'They've also shown that throwing a lot of money at it doesn't work so you have to get to the root of people's lives. What are their work hours? Where do they live and work? Where's childcare?' One nation that has a slight edge in the birth rate compared to its European neighbours is France. Mills added that France's more comprehensive package of subsidised childcare, parental leave and school support goes some way in encouraging couples to have children. Indeed the measures seem to be having a small effect on the country's fertility rate, which was 1.8 children per woman in 2021 compared to the EU average of 1.53 during the same year. 'It's harder work than throwing a baby bonus and trying to think you could do a silver bullet but actually creating an ecosystem that has childcare, that has good maternity and paternity leave, has a good work-life balance – that's where France has done very well,' says Mills. However, it's clear that there is no one pro-natalist policy which will act as a catalyst to boost birth rates. While Farage's proposed Hungarian-style tax breaks look unlikely to persuade couples to have children, Mills explained that measures which addressed quality of life were likely to be more impactful. 'People need a good life, they need good jobs, be able to get a house, childcare,' says Mills. 'It's about wellbeing, it's about work-life balance. That's not as sexy … but these are the things that have been shown to be more effective.'
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Can Nigel Farage really boost Britain's birth rate?
As Sir Keir Starmer continued to drag his feet over one of the most contentious policy issues among Labour MPs and voters, Nigel Farage spotted an opportunity. Proclaiming during a speech last week that Britain had 'lost our sense of focus of just how important family is', the Reform UK leader unveiled plans to lure frustrated Labour voters while also attempting to arrest a decline in the UK's birth rate. Farage pledged that an elected Reform would scrap the two-child benefit cap and introduce a transferable tax allowance for married couples, in a bid to encourage people to have children. 'This is part of a bigger package and policy that we are putting together to try and make the family a more important element in British life,' said Farage. It marks the party's move into pro-natalist policies. Reform's proposed transferable tax allowance for married couples takes inspiration from central Europe. During his time in office Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, has placed significant focus on the importance of birth rates and traditional families. Earlier this week, Farage said he was 'not moralising' on the significance of marriage and added that having been divorced twice his 'track record was not so good on this'. Reform's policy would exempt one partner in a marriage from paying tax on the first £25,000 of their salary. Ben Ramanauskas, a senior fellow in economics at the Policy Exchange, says the proposal would bring the UK 'into a territory where most European countries are'. He adds: 'They have a much more generous system when it comes to taxing households and families.' However, Ramanauskas cast doubt on the idea that the measure could encourage couples to have children: 'The proposal itself won't have much of an impact on what Farage is aiming for in terms of hoping to increase the birth rate.' Reform's plans also miss out a key group of would-be parents. More than half of children in the UK are born to couples out of wedlock. So with the transferable tax allowance only reserved for married couples, the baby boosting effect of the policy is unclear. The party has also said it would scrap the two child benefit cap, a pledge which is estimated to cost £3.4bn, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Tomáš Sobotka, deputy director at the Vienna Institute of Demography, says abolishing the cap would help to lift children out of poverty but its impact on Britain's birth rate is likely to be 'marginal'. 'Most parents today don't desire more than two kids so it's a select group of women and families who are having a third or a fourth child,' he says. 'Providing a bit more in services … will not change fertility planning among many couples.' In Hungary, Orbán's attempts to fix the country's birth crisis mean it spends around 5pc of its GDP on measures aimed at encouraging couples to have children. The most significant of these measures is the country's large tax breaks. Currently mothers under 30 pay no income tax and mothers with three or more children are exempt from paying income tax for life. Orbán has also pledged to extend the measure to mothers of two children by January 2026. The government also offers loans to newly-weds that can be partially or fully written off if the couple has two or three children – as well as subsidies for family car purchases and housing. Despite Orbán's significant spending and hopes of a baby boom, Hungary's birth rate stood at 1.52 children per woman in 2022, in the UK it was 1.53 children per woman in 2021. For context, a country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to ensure it has a stable population, without immigration. 'In the last few years Hungary has experienced fertility declines to the same extent as other countries and it now has exactly the same fertility rate as the European average ... from that perspective Hungarian policies are not bringing in tremendous success,' says Sobotka. But Orbán's focus on large families is helping to deliver an uptick in the number of households with three or more children, Sobotka adds. In the Nordics, the picture isn't any clearer. Finland pioneered the introduction of family friendly policies including parental leave and childcare from the 1980s onwards. The country reported a rise in its birth rates in the 1990s despite going through a financial crisis. 'Introducing these kinds of policies if they are long term … longer parental leave and especially affordable childcare have been shown in a wealth of studies both in the Nordic countries and from other countries to be associated with somewhat higher fertility,' says Anna Rotkirch, of the Family Federation of Finland's Population Research Institute. 'No silver bullet policy' However, she warns these measures 'are not enough for today's situation,' and that 'there's no silver bullet policy.' Indeed, the initial boost to Finland's birth rate in the late 20th century has waned and since 2010 the country has seen its birth rate decline by a third. Yet, Rotkirch says that while government spending and Reform's proposed policies might not have much of a demographic impact they were an important element in reducing child poverty. 'The cost of parenting is real and it is also economic,' she adds. 'Why do we have a society where you get poorer if you have a child?' Over in South Korea the picture is even more challenging. In May 2024, the then-president Yoon Suk Yeol asked for the parliament's cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning. 'We will mobilise all of the nation's capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,' he said. The country has gone through a raft of measures including baby bonuses, subsidised fertility treatments and housing assistance but the country's fertility rate stood at 0.78 children per woman in 2024. Melinda Mills, a professor of demography at Oxford University say: 'They've also shown that throwing a lot of money at it doesn't work so you have to get to the root of people's lives. What are their work hours? Where do they live and work? Where's childcare?' One nation that has a slight edge in the birth rate compared to its European neighbours is France. Mills added that France's more comprehensive package of subsidised childcare, parental leave and school support goes some way in encouraging couples to have children. Indeed the measures seem to be having a small effect on the country's fertility rate, which was 1.8 children per woman in 2021 compared to the EU average of 1.53 during the same year. 'It's harder work than throwing a baby bonus and trying to think you could do a silver bullet but actually creating an ecosystem that has childcare, that has good maternity and paternity leave, has a good work-life balance – that's where France has done very well,' says Mills. However, it's clear that there is no one pro-natalist policy which will act as a catalyst to boost birth rates. While Farage's proposed Hungarian-style tax breaks look unlikely to persuade couples to have children, Mills explained that measures which addressed quality of life were likely to be more impactful. 'People need a good life, they need good jobs, be able to get a house, childcare,' says Mills. 'It's about wellbeing, it's about work-life balance. That's not as sexy … but these are the things that have been shown to be more effective.'
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Meet the Maga moms inspired to have children for Trump
Los Angeles-born and Ivy League-educated, Peachy Keenan isn't the typical picture of a pro-natalist. Yet the married, mother of five is part of a growing movement of mostly Catholic, well-educated women in deep blue California inspired by Donald Trump's calls to have more children. 'To save the country, we need to get out and push the babies out, and to do it in mass scale,' she said. Ms Keenan, who gave up her job to raise her children, aged eight to 19, added: 'When did raising your own baby become this political taboo?' On the campaign trail, Mr Trump pledged to bring about a 'baby boom' to tackle America's ailing birth rate and has since proposed a slew of policies to encourage women to have more children, including paying them. National fertility rates sat at 1.63 per cent last year, slightly higher than a record low set in 2023, but far below the rate needed for a generation to replace itself. The fertility drive has been taken up with abandon by members of Mr Trump's cabinet, with Sean Duffy, the transport secretary and a father of nine, suggesting grants be funnelled into communities with higher marriage and birth rates. His comments echo an agenda pushed by senior Trump allies Elon Musk, a father of 14, and vice-president JD Vance. Whether it's Mr Musk's six-year-old son, X, sitting on his father's shoulder, or Mr Vance's child patting his parents on the head during the inauguration, the second Trump administration has set a new standard for making children a visible part of day-to-day operations. When she's not blasting reporters in the briefing room, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also occasionally brings her nine-month-old son to the office. 'I am deeply proud to support a president and administration so keenly aware of the attack waged against the family in the West today and doing what they can to combat it,' said Isabel Brown, 27, who captioned a picture of herself on social media, cradling her bump with 'Project 2025'. The married content creator and author gave birth to her first child in recent weeks – the first of several, she hopes. 'The Trump administration has started some powerful conversations here in the United States about our fertility crisis,' she said. 'I can tell you that almost all of my friends are currently getting married, are pregnant, or just had their first babies. 'It's an incredibly exciting time to be at the forefront of this fight for the family.' The goal to supercharge birth rates has created an 'unholy alliance' between two wings of the movement, according to Catherine Pakulak, an economist at the Catholic University of America, who is a mother of eight herself. On one hand, there are pro-family voices such as Mr Vance, who has said he wants 'more babies in America', 'not just because they are economically useful. We want more babies because children are good'. Then there is the pro-natalist wing, led by Mr Musk, who has warned 'civilisation is going to crumble' if fertility rates do not climb. 'You talk about it because it excites part of your base. It's clearly the pro-family and pro-life part of the Republican party,' explained Ms Pakulak. Despite their shared objectives, the two factions' means of achieving their aims could not be more different. Flag-bearers of the pro-natalist movement Simone and Malcolm Collins, a Pennsylvania former tech-industry couple who have four children through IVF, have grabbed headlines by using genetic screening to select desirable characteristics in their offspring. Mr Musk has sparked fascination and outrage in equal measure through his efforts to breed a 'legion' of offspring, in part by recruiting potential mothers on X, according to The Wall Street Journal. For many on the pro-natalist wing, the desire to boost the fertility rate is driven by economic concerns. America's birth rate has been in decline since the early 1970s, and that has accelerated since the 2008 recession and the pandemic. According to Ms Pakulak, the author of Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, the long-term decline is fuelled by a range of factors, including economic growth and mechanisation, whereby children are no longer needed in the workforce; and improved social security, meaning parents no longer need to rely on their children to take care of them in old age. The other driving forces are effective contraception, giving women the ability to select when and how many children they want to have; and economic uncertainty. 'When there is uncertainty and distress, people postpone having children, and some fraction of people who postpone will never have that baby,' she explained. If left unchecked, there are fears the country could end up in a similar position to South Korea or Japan, where a perfect storm of increased life expectancy and a precipitous decline in birth rates to as low as 0.78 has led to economic stagnation, with the shrinking workforce propping up a growing population of retirees. However, discourse around the issue is often coloured by a more contentious vision: one tainted by ethno-nationalism and fears over immigration. A $10,000-a-ticket pro-natalist conference in Austin, Texas, last month featured speakers promoting conspiracy theories and, allegedly, eugenics, according to The Daily Wire. Ms Keenan, who attended this same conference, dismissed these views as belonging to a 'tiny fringe' who are not representative of her community. 'The women I know who are deciding to have kids have literally no idea about population decline,' she said. 'They're not thinking about it in racial terms. They would find that lens super gross and super offensive.' Ms Pakulak said: 'What seems very difficult is to get people to have kids who don't want them.' Birth rates aside, many pro-family Trump supporters are chiefly concerned with the decline in family values and view the single-parenting birth factory goals of Mr Musk as anathema to their own. 'I am incredibly sceptical of any proposal that makes children a means to an end,' said Emma Waters, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. And many of those who support the Trump fertility drive remain completely unaware of being part of a political movement. Elissa Fernandez, 43, a mother of eight from Seattle, said she had never heard of pro-natalism, and never set out to have lots of kids, as did Kamiyo Culbertson, 60, a married mother of nine from Washington State. However, Ms Culbertson welcomed Mr Trump's push for women to have more children. 'It's encouraging to hear,' she said. 'I think there's been a leaning the other way – don't get married, don't have kids, that's definitely the story we got from our culture.' Peachy Keenan is the author of Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Meet the Maga moms inspired to have children for Trump
Los Angeles-born and Ivy League-educated, Peachy Keenan isn't the typical picture of a pro-natalist. Yet the married, mother of five is part of a growing movement of mostly Catholic, well-educated women in deep blue California inspired by Donald Trump 's calls to have more children. 'To save the country, we need to get out and push the babies out, and to do it in mass scale,' she said. Ms Keenan, who gave up her job to raise her children, aged eight to 19, added: 'When did raising your own baby become this political taboo?' On the campaign trail, Mr Trump pledged to bring about a 'baby boom' to tackle America's ailing birth rate and has since proposed a slew of policies to encourage women to have more children, including paying them. National fertility rates sat at 1.63 per cent last year, slightly higher than a record low set in 2023, but far below the rate needed for a generation to replace itself. The fertility drive has been taken up with abandon by members of Mr Trump's cabinet, with Sean Duffy, the transport secretary and a father of nine, suggesting grants be funnelled into communities with higher marriage and birth rates. His comments echo an agenda pushed by senior Trump allies Elon Musk, a father of 14, and vice-president JD Vance. Whether it's Mr Musk's six-year-old son, X, sitting on his father's shoulder, or Mr Vance's child patting his parents on the head during the inauguration, the second Trump administration has set a new standard for making children a visible part of day-to-day operations. When she's not blasting reporters in the briefing room, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also occasionally brings her nine-month-old son to the office. 'I am deeply proud to support a president and administration so keenly aware of the attack waged against the family in the West today and doing what they can to combat it,' said Isabel Brown, 27, who captioned a picture of herself on social media, cradling her bump with ' Project 2025 '. The married content creator and author gave birth to her first child in recent weeks – the first of several, she hopes. 'The Trump administration has started some powerful conversations here in the United States about our fertility crisis,' she said. 'I can tell you that almost all of my friends are currently getting married, are pregnant, or just had their first babies. 'It's an incredibly exciting time to be at the forefront of this fight for the family.' The goal to supercharge birth rates has created an 'unholy alliance' between two wings of the movement, according to Catherine Pakulak, an economist at the Catholic University of America, who is a mother of eight herself. On one hand, there are pro-family voices such as Mr Vance, who has said he wants 'more babies in America', 'not just because they are economically useful. We want more babies because children are good'. Then there is the pro-natalist wing, led by Mr Musk, who has warned 'civilisation is going to crumble' if fertility rates do not climb. 'You talk about it because it excites part of your base. It's clearly the pro-family and pro-life part of the Republican party,' explained Ms Pakulak. Despite their shared objectives, the two factions' means of achieving their aims could not be more different. Flag-bearers of the pro-natalist movement Simone and Malcolm Collins, a Pennsylvania former tech-industry couple who have four children through IVF, have grabbed headlines by using genetic screening to select desirable characteristics in their offspring. Mr Musk has sparked fascination and outrage in equal measure through his efforts to breed a 'legion' of offspring, in part by recruiting potential mothers on X, according to The Wall Street Journal. For many on the pro-natalist wing, the desire to boost the fertility rate is driven by economic concerns. America's birth rate has been in decline since the early 1970s, and that has accelerated since the 2008 recession and the pandemic. According to Ms Pakulak, the author of Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, the long-term decline is fuelled by a range of factors, including economic growth and mechanisation, whereby children are no longer needed in the workforce; and improved social security, meaning parents no longer need to rely on their children to take care of them in old age. The other driving forces are effective contraception, giving women the ability to select when and how many children they want to have; and economic uncertainty. 'When there is uncertainty and distress, people postpone having children, and some fraction of people who postpone will never have that baby,' she explained. If left unchecked, there are fears the country could end up in a similar position to South Korea or Japan, where a perfect storm of increased life expectancy and a precipitous decline in birth rates to as low as 0.78 has led to economic stagnation, with the shrinking workforce propping up a growing population of retirees. However, discourse around the issue is often coloured by a more contentious vision: one tainted by ethno-nationalism and fears over immigration. A $10,000-a-ticket pro-natalist conference in Austin, Texas, last month featured speakers promoting conspiracy theories and, allegedly, eugenics, according to The Daily Wire. Ms Keenan, who attended this same conference, dismissed these views as belonging to a 'tiny fringe' who are not representative of her community. 'The women I know who are deciding to have kids have literally no idea about population decline,' she said. 'They're not thinking about it in racial terms. They would find that lens super gross and super offensive.' Ms Pakulak said: 'What seems very difficult is to get people to have kids who don't want them.' Birth rates aside, many pro-family Trump supporters are chiefly concerned with the decline in family values and view the single-parenting birth factory goals of Mr Musk as anathema to their own. 'I am incredibly sceptical of any proposal that makes children a means to an end,' said Emma Waters, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. And many of those who support the Trump fertility drive remain completely unaware of being part of a political movement. Elissa Fernandez, 43, a mother of eight from Seattle, said she had never heard of pro-natalism, and never set out to have lots of kids, as did Kamiyo Culbertson, 60, a married mother of nine from Washington State. However, Ms Culbertson welcomed Mr Trump's push for women to have more children. 'It's encouraging to hear,' she said. 'I think there's been a leaning the other way – don't get married, don't have kids, that's definitely the story we got from our culture.'
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The GOP's Resurgence Of Pro-Natalism Looks A Lot Like The Past
President Donald Trump is reportedly entertaining policy proposals to incentivize American women to have more children. But the proposals don't include basic and undeniably effective ideas like subsidized child care or paid parental leave. Instead, the Trump administration appears to be considering a $5,000 cash 'baby bonus' and a 'National Medal of Motherhood' for any woman who has six or more children. The policy proposals are part of a larger push from conservative Republicans to boost the United States' declining birth rates by persuading families to have more kids. The proposals fall squarely into what's known as the pro-natalist movement — an ideology created to raise declining population rates that has historically been co-opted by far-right misogynist groups, including fascist and authoritarian regimes. The contemporary pro-natalist movement has found a leader in Trump, who has aligned himself with some of the ideology's most extreme advocates, including far-right influencer Jack Posobiec and billionaire Elon Musk. Musk, who was never far from Trump's side at the start of his second term, has fathered 14 children and routinely voices concerns about 'population collapse' due to declining birth rates. Vice President JD Vance famously made fun of 'childless cat ladies' during the campaign and recently urged Americans to have 'more babies.' And Trump has proudly appointed himself 'the fertilization president.' At the same time, the president has literally made it more dangerous to be pregnant and give birth in the U.S. He has bragged about his role in dismantling federal abortion protections and commented that 'it's a beautiful thing to watch' states ban abortion. Dozens of pregnant women have nearly died due to those state-level abortion bans because they're so vague that they also criminalize miscarriage care. Trump has also slashed the social safety net, attacking vital family planning resources for low-income women and implementing policies that target immigrant and LGBTQ+ children. It makes you wonder who, exactly, his administration is telling to have more kids and why. Medals for women who give birth to a lot of children and cash bonuses are not new ideas from the Trump administration, said Denise Lynn, a professor of history and director of gender studies at the University of Southern Indiana. Fascist and authoritarian regimes of the past have used similar pro-natalist ideologies to restore conservative family values within society and relegate women to the home, where their sole duty is to bear children. Germany's Adolf Hitler, Chile's Augusto Pinochet and Italy's Benito Mussolini all employed pro-natalist policies to encourage specific types of married couples to produce children for the state. In Nazi Germany, white women were awarded a bronze medal for having four children, silver for six and gold for eight children. The Nazi Party also gave out financial loans to white families; couples could have more children in order to decrease how much money they would owe back to the state. One of the first things many fascist regimes did was ban abortion and restrict birth control. Trump has proudly claimed responsibility for repealing Roe v. Wade, which led to a dozen or so abortion bans in states around the country. Republicans in the current administration are continuing to attack access to contraception and roll back access to general sexual and reproductive health care. 'There's been lots of studies that have shown that with access to higher education, with access to health care and prenatal, postnatal and perinatal care, and all of these other things, everyone's standard of living increases in a culture,' said Lynn, whose research focuses on the American Communist Party during the Great Depression and the Cold War, specifically around anti-fascism sentiments during those eras. 'So, feminist policies actually benefit everyone, including men, and yet we persist in pushing policies that are going to hurt all of us in the long run.' HuffPost spoke with Lynn about the history of pro-natalism in fascist regimes and some of the through lines she sees to the situation today in the U.S. How do you define pro-natalism? It's a pro-birth political position that has historically revolved around fears about declining populations. Generally, when the party in power shares that pro-natalist view it can appear in public policy. So, for example, anti-abortion laws are pro-natalist, anti-birth control or birth control stigma is pro-natalist. I would even argue that abstinence-only programs are pro-natalist because many pro-natalists see the heterosexual married relationship as the epitome of citizenship, and thus enforcing it in education is a necessary part of a pro-natalist political position. The fundamental idea behind it is that states depend on women's reproductive labor to reproduce [their] citizenry, and so reproductive bodies are expected to serve the state by producing citizens. From your research, how have pro-natalist policies and ideologies worked in tandem or within authoritarian or fascist regimes? Within authoritarian or fascist regimes, reproductive labor becomes a state obligation specifically for women. So it's an obligation that is in service to the state. In Nazi Germany, it was framed as producing future soldiers and laborers to build the nation and, in the 1930s at least, to fight wars for progressing the creation of Hitler's 'lebensraum' or living space. The pro-natalist movement was really strong in Europe after World War I. I would argue that it was still present in the United States, but the imperatives were different because there was so much human loss after World War I that there were countries that saw deep demographic declines. But in Nazi Germany, which also had huge population loss — which, of course, means fewer men to marry, fewer children to have — they saw this as jeopardizing their future security. And then, of course, in Nazi Germany, it's coupled with racial imperatives that they needed to perpetuate the white Germanic stock. That's when we saw the 'racial hygiene' laws become part of state policy in Nazi Germany. Some of your research focuses on anti-fascism and the American Communist Party, specifically how women in the Communist Party fought back against pro-natalist policies. You wrote in one research article that 'in Hitler's Germany and other fascist states such as Italy, Spain and Austria, communists believed there was an effort to 'nationalize' women's maternity in service to the state.' Can you talk to me more about that? The people I studied feared women would lose all autonomy and would be quite literally owned by the nation — their bodies would be owned by the nation, their children's bodies would be owned by the nation. That bodily sovereignty would not belong to women anymore, and that all decision-making was now influenced by national concerns and certainly not influenced by personal concerns or even medical concerns. It's framed as an imperative for women to have babies for the nations and not for their own emotional, mental, physical, well well-being. Traditionally, we think of childbirth in the past as children were used as laborers for the family, that their existence was seen as something that would help a family. In the pro-natalist state, children are laborers that serve the state. One of the things that I discuss in my more recent research focuses on anti-Korean War activism among Black radicals. One of their big concerns was that they were basically being told they needed to produce cannon fodder for the state's future wars. This bond between their children transformed into: the state needs me to produce soldiers. I want to talk about whether you see any through lines from that point in history to what's happening in the U.S. today. I'm covering the attacks on the abortion pill, mifepristone. In the updated complaint from three anti-choice states trying to restrict access to the pill, they use pretty barefaced pro-natalist terminology that makes me think of what you just said: 'Defendants' efforts enabling the remote dispensing of abortion drugs has caused abortions for women in Plaintiff States and decreased births in Plaintiff States. This is a sovereign injury to the State in itself.' Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's a great example of pro-natalism. You wrote in that same article: 'In Nazi Germany, improved economic conditions led to an increased birth rate. But pro-natalist policies helped to encourage this rise, particularly the laws prohibiting abortion and allowing for the prosecution of those performing and receiving abortions.' It's hard not to think of what's happening in the U.S. when I read that. The fall of federal abortion protections in 2022 has led to nearly half the country criminalizing care, and physicians are being prosecuted, and pregnant people are dying. The Dobbs decision [overturning Roe v. Wade] was a pro-natalist policy. I like the language of the current movement, the language of forced birth policies, because by banning abortion, they really do take away women's autonomy. One of the problems in the United States is that not only are we limiting access to abortion and birth control, but we have forced birth policies in a country that has aggressively rejected things like maternity leave, Medicare for all, adequate prenatal and postnatal care and affordable childcare. These things have not been remedied even when Roe was in place. One of the arguments behind pro-natalism is that the state needs people to do labor — right now we are heading toward a demographic cliff with an aging population and fewer younger people to do the work needed for society and to take care of the aged. Of course, this could be solved by immigration and creating pathways to citizenship, but the very same people committed to pro-natalism take hardline stances against immigration. This just further demonstrates that pro-natalism's primary goal is to enforce second-class citizenship on women. Are there any pro-natalist policies from Nazi Germany or other fascist regimes you've studied that stand out or are similar to the ones that the Trump administration is entertaining? I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues the other day about the proposed $5,000 allowance for someone who has a child. That reminded me of the loans that Nazi Germany afforded to white Aryan families. That is very similar. It's also a joke — $5,000 isn't going to do much. Under Nazi Germany's racial hygiene laws, they gave out loans to families, specifically to the husband, that promised you could reduce your payback amount with every subsequent child. One of the big things that the women I studied — and they talked about it well into the Cold War — is the fascist triple K: Kinder, Küche, Kirche, which means 'children, kitchen, church.' This pro-natalist ideology sought to confine women, essentially, to second-class citizenship. I keep thinking about the idea to award a 'National Medal of Motherhood' to women who have six kids and the similarity to Nazi Germany's motherhood medals. It really reduces women to breeders. It ignores the deep complexity of childbirth. You have a uterus and ovaries, but that doesn't mean you have the ability to have children. But if you can't have children and you have a uterus and ovaries, do you no longer have status in your own country? It marginalizes fathers and fatherhood. There's so many layers of issues. How does pro-natalism intersect with race and eugenics? In United States' history, pro-natalist policies were directly linked to eugenics. Eugenics emerged in the U.S. when middle- and upper-class white women were having fewer children, while immigrants and people of color continued to have more children. A lot of that has to do with access to birth control information, and eugenicists wanted to flip that script completely and encourage white birth rates. But only appropriate white birth rates. One of the doctors involved in the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell was given a citation by the Nazi government. It was about this woman, Carrie Buck, who had been confined to a mental health institution. It's likely she was probably raped by a doctor there, but became pregnant with a second child out of wedlock and she was accused of being an 'idiot,' which was a eugenics term for someone who might have had a second to fourth grade mentality. Carrie Buck was white, but eugenicists were like, 'Well, we don't want idiots to have children either, and the Nazi government is going to learn from that case.' Essentially, the Nazis really liked our racial hygiene cases because it glorified not just white births, but appropriate white births. Of course, as the 20th century goes on, eugenics itself becomes stigmatized, but it still lives on. So Black women, Latinas and Indigenous women faced forced sterilization, while white women were often refused permanent sterilization until they had a specific number of children. Do you see any of that today? We can definitely still see the eugenicist language today. I don't think it's a coincidence that forced birth policies jeopardize people of color the most because white nationalists have no interest in their birth outcomes. They're only concerned about producing more white babies. There was a senator from Louisiana who basically said, 'We have a great maternal mortality rate if you don't include Black women.' And that was only a couple of years ago. Our policies around forced birth do disadvantage people who are already disadvantaged, and I don't think that's coincidental. Where do we go from here? One of the things that I think about a lot is the question around health. Politicians don't talk about reproductive care as an issue of health. We see conversations on social media that say, 'Well, birth is a natural part of life.' And, sure, but maternal mortality rates were very high until the 1950s and one of the things that changed was access to care for the reproductive body. Those poor birth outcomes weren't that long ago. I worry that we're heading towards a future that's gonna look a lot like our past. I just hope it doesn't last very long. The Trump Administration Thinks You Should Be OK With Being Poor This Trump Agenda Item Isn't In The News — But He's Still Quietly Chipping Away At It Trump Is Quietly Using The U.S. Military In A Whole New Way
