There’s something unique about the still-forming Trump 2.0 administration: its fecundity. The average number of children per family in the United States is under two children, but in the new administration, the average is far higher.
President-elect Donald Trump himself has five children, and his vice president is a young father of three, who has often been seen hands-on parenting, even while he was campaigning.
The future co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk has fathered a cool dozen children; Trump’s pick for Transportation secretary Sean Duffy shares nine children with his wife, Rachel; and Trump’s picks for Defense and Health and Human Services secretaries, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are each fathers to seven. Trump’s picks for secretary of State (Sen. Marco Rubio) and CIA director (Mark Ratcliff) are fathers of four, and the picks for Interior (North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum), Department of Homeland Security (South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem), and national security adviser (Mike Waltz) each have three children.
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The decision to bring children into this world is the ultimate expression of hope and optimism about the future. If you believe the world is ending and misery awaits future generations, you’re not keen to bring children into it in order to suffer. The future administration is packed with individuals who have a strong incentive to make America, and the world, as great as it can be. Nothing is as motivating as your own children.
You’d be hard-pressed to find two individuals who have shown a deeper understanding or concern over plummeting birth rates than Musk and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and it’s not just talk; they’ve personally prioritized being part of the solution.
But in their respective roles, solving the birth crisis is likely not going to be at the top of the agenda. Just as Trump created a new role for Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead, so too does a specialized czar need to be created to tackle the plummeting birth rates.
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What would pro-natalist policy look like on a practical level? For many conservatives, there’s a concern about the growth of Big Government, that the solution to the problem would be a road to Hell lined with good intentions. Without the growth of government programs, there are ways for the incoming Trump administration to change the course when it comes to the birth crisis.
Recently, Musk tweeted in response to a report about record-low births in Sweden and Britain, “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness.”
This is exactly where to start. We have to change the messaging around children and birth where we can control it, starting in schools; we can’t just teach how to avoid pregnancy in school health classes. Negative messaging about pregnancy and motherhood has been weaponized to discourage teenage pregnancy, but those negative feelings linger long after the teenage years.
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Research has shown that public information campaigns in East Asia aimed at population control were effective — too effective. Writing for his X account @MoreBirths, Daniel Hess advocated for pro-natalist advertising campaigns that would elevate the status of motherhood. He wrote, “Parents crave status and validation for their efforts more than money. And leaders can give that, by celebrating parents at every opportunity.”
We already have the stars of these campaigns within the administration for right-leaning Americans. Celebrities such as James Vanderbeek (six children) and Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds (four children) could star in ads similar to the wildly popular “Got Milk?” campaigns of the ’90s that made milk sexy and attractive.
Under the umbrella of a single department, it’s time for a reevaluation of government policies that make it more difficult to be a parent. From working with the Department of Transportation on drafting regulations ensuring families with young children automatically sit together on airplanes to working with state lawmakers to make it easier to become a licensed childcare provider, there are ways for government to flex and bend without creating new entitlement programs. Washington Examiner senior political columnist Timothy P. Carney wrote an entire book about how our society is Family Unfriendly, and his analysis is a blueprint for how to fix it.
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During his first term, Trump made it possible for parents to keep more of their own money when he raised child tax credits. Vice President Kamala Harris began promising to do the same when she was on the campaign trail. From raising these credits to allowing more child-related expenses to be deducted, there are countless ways the tax code could be amended in order to make parenthood more affordable and attainable.
A recent survey put the number of Americans who believe we’re on the wrong track as high as 75%. After World War II, in a show of optimism, the country experienced an unprecedented baby boom (hence the generational moniker boomer). We need a similar burst of optimism, and there’s no more meaningful way to do that than to create a second generation of boomers.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a homeschooling mother of six and a writer. She is the bestselling co-author of Stolen Youth.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
