Until recently, Vietnam was one of the last holdouts trying to limit population growth by national fiat, but amid falling birthrates it just announced it is ending its one-or-two child policy. Such policies are sometimes termed “anti-natatlist,” and they are in sharp decline. Meanwhile, many other countries including the US are adopting “pro-natalist” policies to bring their declining birthrates back up. For example, after decades of limiting the birth rate with its one-child policy China, pivoted to a three-child policy to raise its birthrate. Both types of policies undercut women’s rights and choices.
The suspect who died in last month’s shocking bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs was said to have an “anti-natalist ideology” according to investigators, meaning that he felt that there was something morally wrong with having children or helping people to have them, so he allegedly took it upon himself to prevent it. That attitude clearly violates people’s rights.
But so does anti-natalism’s polar opposite, pro-natalism, in which people (usually men with power) take it upon themselves to cajole or coerce women to have children (or more children). Pronatalism undercuts women’s rights and self-determination. It has ties to white supremacy and anti-feminist politics.
Yet it is ascendant in the U.S. and globally. For example, the White House Mother’s Day statement professed to defend the “God-given dignity” of unborn children and asserted the President and his Administration “want American families to grow.” It comes on the heels of the Administration reportedly considering a $5,000 “baby bonus” for new mothers and entertaining other pro-baby proposals, from reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for married parents, to funding programs to educate women on their menstrual cycles so they’re more likely to conceive.
Such policies send up bright flares in the ongoing culture wars around reproductive rights, but do little to lower real costs and barriers to motherhood.
Millennials and Gen Zers are known for delaying certain life milestones like marriage, homeownership, and having children later than their predecessors. Politicians and pundits are quick to blame what they call “feminism” and espouse pronatalist rhetoric demanding young women stop being so selfish and start having children earlier. This ignores basic reproductive rights as well as the real barriers to childbearing.
Young women today have plenty of good reasons to forgo or delay having children. They face stagnant wages, soaring living and healthcare costs, and crippling student debt. Nearly one in four Millennials and Gen Zers say they plan on never having children due to financial reasons.
Delaying pregnancy until later in life gives women more time to become financially stable, easing one of the primary stresses on new parents. But it’s an option only available to some, since it comes with significant costs. Later life pregnancies often require medical interventions like in-vitro fertilization (IVF), hormonal therapies, and freezing eggs, which cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single pregnancy attempt. Many U.S. insurance policies do not cover fertility treatment. The Trump administration claims it is making IVF more accessible, yet gutted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s primary IVF research team.
Gender disparities and attacks on gender equity pose other barriers to childbirth. Trump’s war on DEI could strip many working women of higher paying jobs with essential benefits like maternity leave and health insurance. And by slashing remote work, access to contraception, and federal programs related to gender, the Administration has blocked many of the avenues mothers rely on to assert some control over their own reproductive lives.
Another factor in decisions about having children are the inequitable gender norms that have been dubbed “the mating gap:” a lack of eligible, educated, equal male partners willing and able to share the burden equitably. Women are outpacing men in education, jobs, and other success metrics, yet even when they make more money than their husbands, women still do more of the housework and childcare.
These disparities are greatest for Black women, who make up 65% of all Black college graduates. Statistically, men are not matching women in earning potential or childcare, forcing many women to either stay single or “marry down.” Choosing the latter can cost them upwards of $25,000 a year.
Reproductive justice is about expanding, not limiting, women’s choices. Just as it’s wrong to try to prevent people who want them from having children, it’s wrong for men to expect women to offer their bodies in the service of pronatalist, anti-choice agendas. Women need more options and more support for deciding whether to have children, on their own terms and no one else’s.
Anti-natalist violence is reprehensible, but so is pronatalist coercion. Today, high costs, gender inequities, and ideologically driven policies are confining women to archaic, patriarchal family structures that constrain their agency and interfere in their reproductive choices.
Pronatalist propaganda and piddling pro-baby incentives won’t fix this. Instead, we need to invest in women’s freedom to choose when and how to have children with paid maternity leave, access to contraception, and lowering fertility treatment costs.