(OSV News) — Depending on the context, the concept of pronatalism — encouraging people to have children, or the promotion of childbearing — can either be cause to celebrate the critical role of the family in society; a techno-elitist vision of a future populated by humans engineered for specific traits; or a cringe-worthy expression of anti-immigrant nativism.
What’s the difference?
The definition found in the Cambridge Dictionary illustrates the complexity of arriving at a universal understanding, flatly stating that pronatalism is “the idea that it is important to have children in order to increase the number of people in a country, especially the number of people who are not immigrants.”
Well, no — not always.
“Fundamentally, when we talk about pronatalism, we are talking about people who think it’s not great that fertility is so low. So if you think it would be nice if we had more babies, you are a pronatalist,” explained Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.
“Fundamentally, when we talk about pronatalism, we are talking about people who think it’s not great that fertility is so low. So if you think it would be nice if we had more babies, you are a pronatalist,” explained Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.
“Now,” he continued, “if you find yourself saying, ‘But that doesn’t seem like most of the people who are described as pronatalist in the media; they seem kind of like weirdos,’ that’s because people think that there should be more babies for lots of different reasons — and they see the problem of low fertility as being a problem for lots of different reasons.”
Differing perspectives on why low fertility is a problem
What are some of the reasons people might view low fertility as a problem?
Stone identified three.
“The first set of reasons you could call structural, or economic,” he noted. “‘We need babies because if we don’t have babies, who will pay Social Security?’ Or, ‘If we don’t have babies, who will be the labor force to drive economic growth or innovation? Who will serve in the military and defend us?’
“Basically, this perspective is saying, we need babies because babies are useful for other people,” said Stone. “I call it economic or structural pronatalism.”
“The second kind of pronatalism,” he continued, “would say low fertility is a problem because there is some community that is intrinsically valuable and worth perpetuating.”
But Stone said the reasons behind “communitarian pronatalism” can vary widely. It may on the one hand have “totally reasonable and innocuous stuff like, ‘I want the community of my family lineage to continue, so I’m going to have babies.'” But it can also include, for example, people calling for more white babies out of an ideology of white superiority.
“That is not innocuous,” he said. “In the same way there’s many varieties of economic structural pronatalism, there are many varieties of communitarian pronatalism.”
He said the third kind of pronatalism is “individualist pronatalism.”
“It basically says the reason it’s a problem fertility is low is because people want more kids than they’re having, and they’re clearly having barriers to having that. And,” Stone concluded, “it’s really weird that we would live in a society where people systematically don’t have the families they want to have. That’s just intrinsically bad.”
Declining fertility rates a global phenomenon
In July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024, with 1.62 children being born per woman. In the early 1960s, the rate was 3.5; by 1976, it was 1.7. As recently as 2007, the U.S. boasted a birth rate ensuring each generation had enough children — about 2.1 babies per woman — to replace itself.
Birth rates in Europe are comparable to the U.S., with France at 1.64 babies per woman; the United Kingdom at 1.54; Germany at 1.46; Spain at 1.21; and Italy at 1.2.
But declining fertility rates are a global phenomenon. In Asia, India’s birth rate stands at 1.94 babies per woman; the Philippines, 1.88; and South Korea, 0.75.
In the Americas, Guatemala’s birth rate is 2.26 babies per woman; while Mexico’s is 1.87 and Argentina’s is 1.51.
The top five countries reported by the United Nations as those with the highest rates of the number of children born per woman — Chad (5.94); Somalia (5.91); the Democratic Republic of Congo (5.90); the Central African Republic (5.81); and Niger (5.79) — are on the continent of Africa.
Cultural views and pronatalism
“I think the legacy of the population bomb — the myth of overpopulation — still lingers over the discussion,” Patrick Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. “If you look at public opinion polling, almost as many Americans think our problem is having too many babies globally, versus a future where we’re not having enough.”
The flipside of that, Brown said, “is this idea that if we talk too openly about the birth rate, we’re going to end up sort of forcing women into having births — forced pregnancy; we’re going to take away women’s rights; ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ kind of thing that you hear from the left.”
The six seasons of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Hulu and Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same title both depict a totalitarian and theocratic state that replaces the United States of America. The handmaids are a caste of women forced into sexual servitude in an attempt to repopulate the world.
Plain apathy, however, may be another pronatalism challenge.
“I think most of it is just a cultural shift that says, ‘If you want to have a kid, great; if you don’t have a kid, that’s fine too. There’s no real right or wrong. There’s no social value here. It’s just all about a matter of consumer, individual preference — and who are we to say that having kids is any better than not having kids?'” explained Brown. “I think that is probably the dominant strain that pronatalism, in all its varied forms, is trying to push back against to say, ‘No, there actually is something valuable and necessary about the hard work of having kids.’
Ideological forces seek to dominate pronatalist conversation
The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares the family is “the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society.”
“We’re trying to use the family as the building block of a healthy society,” Brown said, regarding a healthy pronatalism in line with the church’s vision for the human person.
At the same time, however, he cautioned that pronatalism is also beset by ideological forces seeking to co-opt the movement.
“Pronatalism — the sort of official pro-natalist movement — very quickly has become colonized by racists on one side, and eugenicists on the other,” Brown said. “Silicon Valley money is sort of hacking reproduction in a way that is not just genuinely morally concerning … but ethically and socially and culturally pushing us in this sort of eugenic direction of optimizing what your child should look like, and picking the embryo that has the highest IQ score.”
Perhaps the world’s most famous pronatalist, tech industrialist Elon Musk — father of at least 14 children by several different women — declared in a March 2025 Fox News interview, “The birth rate is very low in almost every country, and unless that changes, civilization will disappear. … Humanity is dying.” Nonetheless, Musk is selective. In his 2015 biography, he was quoted as saying, “If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad.”
Pronatalist influencers Simone and Malcolm Collins — founders of Pronatalist.org — grabbed public attention after they admitted using genetic testing and selection to optimize the mental health traits of their unborn children.
“That kind of thing — which is part and parcel of the current pronatalist movement — gives people the heebie jeebies, and for good reason, right?’ asked Brown. “It’s not about helping people start a family and helping people afford to have kids. It’s about turning children into consumer products.”
Faith formation challenge: “Most Catholics do not live pronatally”
Kody W. Cooper, an associate professor in the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs, suggested Catholics could do more to improve the declining birth rate.
The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University — noted in 2011 the average size of a U.S. Catholic household was the same as the national average, 2.6 persons per household.
“Catholics need to be honest with themselves,” said Cooper. “Most Catholics do not live pronatally, if the polling data is to be believed. By some measures, as many as 90% of regular Mass-going Catholics use artificial contraception, contrary to the teachings of ‘Humanae Vitae.'”
He understands the common objections, but still presses the point.
“Perhaps the project could advance if Catholics got their own house in order,” Cooper said, “by which I mean bishops and priests boldly executing their offices by preaching pronatalism, and the laity in seeking to cultivate the virtues required to live pronatally.”
Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.
