The belief that people should have more children, and that governments and societies should encourage them to do so. In America the movement draws from two wings: libertarian tech entrepreneurs who believe large families composed of bright children will produce a more creative, productive society; and religious conservatives who see large families as an expression of their faith. These groups are bound together by a sense that the decline in birth rates is a cultural issue—a symptom of liberal decadence and the short-sightedness of modern culture.
Tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen, Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have publicly fretted about falling birth rates and funnelled money into companies and research initiatives developing reproductive technologies. Religious conservatives, such as those at the Heritage Foundation, have pushed for policies that might expand the population—including banning abortion and reducing subsidies for contraceptives. J.D. Vance, a vocal Catholic whose political career was bankrolled by Thiel, sits at the nexus of this alliance.
NatalCon is a conference founded by Kevin Dolan, a Mormon father of seven, that bills itself as "gathering the brightest minds in the world in search of new solutions" to falling birth rates. Its 2025 gathering, held in Austin, Texas, attracted around 200 attendees—nearly all male and mostly white—including pro-natalist thinkers, tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and people with the ear of the Trump administration. Among the prominent figures at the 2025 conference were Simone and Malcolm Collins, tech pro-natalists who run the Collins Institute for the Gifted and have invested in fertility-tech companies.
Many governments have tried to bribe people to have more babies. South Korea—which has a total fertility rate of 0.72, the lowest on Earth—has spent $270bn over 20 years on pro-natalist policies to little effect. Viktor Orban's Hungary spends 6% of GDP on pro-natalist measures, yet its fertility rate of 1.56 is lower than those of Romania and Bulgaria, which have spent far less.
Catherine Pakaluk, a professor of political economy at the Catholic University of America who has researched the economics of family and demography, argues that cash incentives do not work because "having a child is more like joining the military than going out to dinner". She found from interviewing 50 American women with at least five children that raising children is a learned skill, and that women accustomed to being around fewer children find the prospect of having their own too daunting.
The tech wing of pro-natalism has invested in fertility technologies including IVF, embryo screening, period-tracking apps and fertility financing. Sam Altman of OpenAI has funded Conception, a company working on technology that would allow two men to become biological parents. Orchid, a company backed by Silicon Valley, sells whole-genome sequencing for embryos before implantation, to screen for genetically identifiable neurodevelopmental disorders.
Some religious conservatives oppose IVF because the process produces excess embryos that are often destroyed. The Heritage Foundation supported the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that frozen embryos have the same rights as living children. But many religious pro-natalists take a more pragmatic view, acknowledging IVF's broad public support.
China's fertility rate has fallen to roughly one child per woman, among the lowest in the world. On its current trajectory, the UN projects China's population will halve by 2100. In what state media call the "Tianmen experience", the city of Tianmen in Hubei province has put together some of the most generous cash allowances in China: families having a second child can receive up to 287,188 yuan ($40,300) and those having a third up to 355,988 yuan, mostly as housing subsidies—staggering sums in a province where annual disposable income is barely 40,000 yuan. In January 2025 the central government introduced an annual baby bonus of 3,600 yuan for the first three years of a child's life—unusual in a country that generally shuns "welfarism".
Chinese demographers have calculated that, relative to GDP per person, education costs are about 50% higher in China than in America. Parents must guide children through a ruthlessly competitive examination system—tough enough with one child and much harder with more.
Critics worry that pro-natalism, especially the tech variant's enthusiasm for embryo screening and heritable traits, edges towards eugenics—a concern sharpened by the movement's overwhelmingly white demographics and its association with nativist politics. Adam Rutherford, a professor of genetics at University College London, has noted similarities between ideas circulating in the 1920s and 1930s—driven by the sense that certain populations were entering terminal decline—and today's movement. "When Elon Musk talks about falling birth rates as the end of civilisation as we know it, it's worth asking what he means by 'civilisation'," he has said.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."