The National Women’s Law Center warns that pronatalist policies like baby bonuses and motherhood medals are designed to control women’s bodies rather than genuinely support families.
The Trump administration is using one of the oldest tools of patriarchy—promising rewards for compliance—through a wave of proposed pronatalist policies designed to push women into motherhood and encourage them to give birth to more children. Among these proposals are $5,000 “baby bonuses” and a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children. The administration is considering offering fertility tracking classes to teach women how to monitor ovulation and time conception, and has even proposed reserving 30 percent of the prestigious international Fulbright fellowships for applicants who are married or have children, sidelining those who are not.
A recent report by the National Women’s Law Center warns that these proposals are not random: They stem from an “obscure, dangerous, and increasingly influential movement of ‘pronatalists’” that are now dictating the Trump administration’s family policy.
The NWLC report makes clear that pronatalism isn’t just about increasing birth rates. Pronatalists are pushing for more white babies—and for white women to abandon the workforce to raise those babies at home: “From racist eugenics to harmful policy solutions, this movement is steeped in controlling women’s bodies and creating a dystopian, white supremacist future.”
The NWLC report exposes the darker agenda hidden behind the language of family values. “Underneath shiny motherhood medals and promises of baby bonuses is a movement intent on elevating white supremacist ideology and forcing women out of the workplace,” said Emily Martin, chief program officer of the National Women’s Law Center.
According to NWLC, there are two major groups of pronatalists: Silicon Valley tech elites, such as Elon Musk, who claim that “high-IQ” people like themselves should be having more children; and traditional conservatives, who advocate for pushing women back into stay-at-home motherhood.
Pronatalists obsess on “declining genetic quality” and promote selective procreation to create so-called “good quality children,” NWLC argues.
Pronatalists warn of looming labor shortages and economic decline, yet they oppose immigration and urge white Christian women to abandon work to produce more white children.
The NWLC report identifies several pronatalist men in the Trump administration: former senior advisor Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance, director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy—who has prioritized transportation projects in areas with high birth and marriage rates.
Pronatalists warn of looming labor shortages and economic decline, yet they oppose immigration and urge white Christian women to abandon work to produce more white children.
At a 2025 pronatalist conference, “Pizzagate” proponent Jack Posobiec rallied a crowd of conservative white males with a call to save “the West” by having more children: “We are not replacing ourselves. Meanwhile, those who don’t share our values are.”
Beyond promoting more births, pronatalists embrace a broader agenda steeped in racism and misogyny. Pronatalists blame workforce shortages on abortion, denounce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “the most destructive set of laws in American history” and push the “Great Replacement Theory”—the conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants and people of color are plotting to replace white populations in Western countries.
NWLC sums up their core agenda:
“This movement isn’t just about birth rates or making sure that we have enough workers to take over when older workers retire. It’s about increasing the number of white babies compared to non-white babies, reducing women’s options by forcing them into motherhood and out of the workplace, and restoring a less equal, less just, and more sexist and racist version of the United States.”
While pronatalists encourage white women to find a husband, leave the workforce and have lots of babies, the movement “completely dismisses the economic and social realities of child-rearing in this country,” notes NWLC. In reality, the Trump administration is dismantling the very basic support systems families depend on such as Medicaid (which covers nearly half of all pregnancies), food stamps that serve 42 million women and children and Head Start childcare programs. Meanwhile, they are rolling back civil protections against sex and race discrimination in the workplace and eviscerating access to abortion and birth control.
As an alternative to pronatalism and the Trump administration’s so-called “family” agenda, NWLC advocates for “policies that meaningfully and holistically support women, children and families throughout their lives,” including expanding access to affordable child care, healthcare, food and housing; ensuring quality jobs with paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, and stable, predictable work schedules; and enforcing protections against pregnancy discrimination at work and school.
In the end, Martin says, the pronatalist movement’s rhetoric collapses under its own hypocrisy:
“The pronatalist movement would have you believe it is pro-family, but a real pro-family agenda would include protecting reproductive health care, investing in child care as a public good, promoting workplace policies that enable parents to succeed, and ensuring that all children have the resources that they need to thrive not just at birth, but throughout their lives. The administration’s deep hostility toward these pro-family policies tells you all that you need to know about pronatalists’ true motives.”
Great Job Carrie N. Baker & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
