The Rise of Pronatalism and Its Advocates
As worldwide fertility rates keep dropping, a larger movement has sprung up, pushing back against this trend and advocating for a higher birth rate. The movement’s leaders cast a decline in the birth rate as a problem, not a solution, and insist that having babies is the only viable answer to what’s supposedly ailing society. This is mostly a religious conservative-dominated movement. Still, some figures not associated with religious conservatism—like Elon Musk—have also joined this pronatalist bandwagon.
Demographic Challenges and Economic Implications
The concern that population numbers may dwindle, and that this could harm societies, is not without justification. However, the way the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and other organizations view the matter may lead to forgetting very important aspects involved when people have children. The emphasis that these organizations put on “improving productivity” carries the too-easy assumption that people will always have the same kinds of children they have now.
The falling fertility rate is not merely a surface statistic; it foretells unprecedented, unfelt, and in some cases, unrecognized changes sweeping through our societies. The United Nations projects that the global fertility rate will fall to below two children per woman by 2050. This is already evident in places like Japan, where the fertility rate is a bleak 1.3. The implications for the economy—what shrinking productivity and contractive consumerism will do to public debt and social security demands that are 10, 20, and 30 years out—haven’t yet registered with political and economic elites. Yet, pronatalist remedies are two things at once—fun and funny. They have fun projecting what a new pronatalist age might look like, and they have a lot of (unacknowledged) fun being with the kids they have.
Technological Solutions and Ethical Concerns
Prominent advocates of the pronatalist movement, the Collins family, run a foundation that pushes for policies resembling those of a political campaign, urging increased birth rates. According to the foundation’s leaders, a “fertility collapse” threatens not just our way of life but also our way of ruling one another. Fertility, they argue, is “not just a personal matter” but also “an existential necessity.” They allege that the downward trend in fertility is largely due to the influence of our educational institutions, which they claim are driving cultural homogenization. Despite being far from the only group calling attention to the declining birth rate in the U.S. and other Western nations, the Collins family and its foundation enjoy a singular perch from which to advocate for this issue.
The effort to reproduce selectively underscores ethical questions about the genetic chisel. The Collinses are happy with the potential outcome, but that is as it should be. However, using genetics in this way, to fashion a new sort of human, has implications for society that Collins and company are not examining closely enough. What if these engineered living humans are just too darned good?
Cultural Shifts and Long-Term Perspectives
The Collinses think that American culture can be better and that we can make it better. They acknowledge that many of the changes they propose emanate from the right, but they frame their critique in the language of the left. They challenge something called “the right-wing critique of modern life,” which they believe is trying to win us over to an era when families could thrive. They hold the right partly responsible for what they think is a drip, drip, dripping discouragement of family life in contemporary America.
SV’s long-term VC outlook may not serve society’s immediate needs. Why? Because society urgently requires something very different from what tech and venture capitalists promise. Society needs a sustainable future, which means increasing not only the quantity of our children but also the quality of life they’ll lead. Right now, we’re a long way from that. Tech VCs tend to ignore these realities, making their outlook seem unrealistic and even irresponsible.
Those who favor pronatalism believe that raising birth rates is crucial for economic sustainability and cultural viability. This viewpoint tends to see demographic trends in black-and-white terms, but they are much more complex and nuanced. Increasing the number of births doesn’t ensure a bright future. Our children need an excellent education, access to affordable, quality healthcare, and a society where they will be treated justly and equitably. The assumption that technology can solve our demographic problems if we just throw enough money at it is overly simplistic, to say the least.
The average reader might find the pronatalist movement a bit difficult to comprehend. Yet, its implications are profound and may have effects that one day will be seen as massive. The conversation surrounding birth rates is not just about numbers but about what kind of society we want to have and whether we are doing what is necessary to ensure that the next generation will thrive.
Although the pronatalist movement stems from real concerns about falling birth rates, it forces us to think through some fundamental ethical, economic, and social issues. Individuals promoting birth and family growth have legitimate concerns that the nation’s prosperity will suffer if fewer children are born over time. Yet, they seldom address the systemic societal and economic factors—like the extreme cost of child-rearing, the unaffordability of housing, and the lack of well-paying and stable jobs—that serve as disincentives for the current generation to have children.
We are now at a demographic crossroads, a moment when the conversation about population and our shared future takes on added urgency and hilarity. If we are to have a society of any kind, we need to not only have an adequate number of people but also create commitments among them so that they can live in a sustainable and thriving way. This is a problem that any ethic of responsibility, any commitment to political economy, and any culture worthy of the name must tackle.