Why the Left Should Embrace Pronatalism
February 25, 2025
Elon Musk has allegedly fathered his 13th child with a fourth woman, the conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair. Judging by St. Clair’s public remarks on Musk’s platform, X, theirs was not necessarily a love connection: In asking that Musk acknowledge his paternity, St. Clair did not issue an emotional appeal but rather, through her spokesperson, a request that Musk “finish” an unspecified “agreement” with her. Historians may one day reflect on the open concubinage at the end of America’s experiment with liberal democracy, and what it revealed about the disruption characteristic of our era: the compromise of the right’s typical defense of traditional families by the Nietzscheans of Silicon Valley, in favor of having children for quantity’s sake.
This is an unfortunate development for the general cause of pronatalism—the principle that having children is good and should be promoted by society—as it has now acquired the reputation of an elite trend intended to advance conservative social projects. Following the logic of negative polarization, progressives now seem inclined to reject the mantle of baby-friendliness; if the right wants it, the thinking goes, it must be bad. But pronatalism is not inherently right-wing. Birth rates really are falling: America’s declined 2 percent from 2022 to 2023 alone, and only six countries are expected to have birth rates above the replacement rate in 2100. The policies associated with pronatalism, moreover, naturally belong to the left, and there is a progressive case for making the country more welcoming to families in hopes of achieving a range of benefits, including a bump in the birth rate.
