A once-fringe movement claims having more babies is the only way to save civilization. NPR reporter Lisa Hagen and sociologist Karen Guzzo explain who's empowering pronatalism today.
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Have more babies, or civilization dies. That's the rallying cry behind a once fringe ideology that has made its way into the mainstream. Pronatalism has been in the news lately, with Trump policies underway to increase birth rates by giving away a $5,000 baby bonus for parents and a national medal of motherhood for moms who have six or more children. Pronatalists warn of an apocalyptic future - that if birth rates in the U.S. keep falling, we might be headed towards economic collapse, even extinction. They're pushing ideas like genetic engineering, limiting access to contraceptives, and the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which believes that there is a plot to replace white populations with nonwhite immigrants.
One of the more well-known faces of the movement is Elon Musk, who reportedly has at least 14 biological children with several different women and has called the world's population decline the greatest threat to humanity. But critics argue that this movement isn't solely about increasing birth rates. It's about who gets to reproduce, under what terms and at what cost? They argue that this movement ignores the skyrocketing price of child care in our country, our broken parental leave systems and a woman's autonomy over her own body.
Well, today, we're joined by two people whose work explores this movement and the motivations behind it. Dr. Karen Guzzo is a sociologist and fertility expert serving as the director of the Carolina Population Center and a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And Lisa Hagen is a reporter for NPR who has been covering the pronatal movement and attended last month's second annual Natal Con conference in Austin. Lisa Hagen and Karen Guzzo, welcome to FRESH AIR.
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