Why does Elon Musk want us all to have more kids?

The Tesla CEO has fuelled pronatalists with his hyperbolic talk of population ‘collapse’, writes Ben Stallworthy. And he isn’t the only prominent figure doing so...

Pronatalist rhetoric is dangerous and is often laced with nationalism and prejudice. (Getty)

An Australian model shared, on social media, 118 reasons why she doesn’t want to have children, and received a “wave of hatred” in response. It has resurfaced age-old conversations about women and parenting that echo political fearmongering.

Declining birth rates. Population collapse. Ageing populations. These are the political and economic trigger words surrounding this issue, and while weighty political discourse and criticism of individual choices may seem very different, they are increasingly coinciding. Pronatalism comes in many forms, and many should give us cause for concern.

Recent months have seen the pronatalist movement gather momentum here in the UK, with many of the same players involved repeatedly. Jacob Rees-Mogg has been vocal on this issue, and his fellow Conservative MP Miriam Cates has been at the epicentre, giving speeches at May’s National Conservatism and October’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conferences, writing opinion pieces for The Daily Telegraph, appearing on GB News and, earlier this month, holding an event in parliament, “From Baby Boom to Baby Bust”.

Ms Cates and her allies haven’t called for any restrictions on women’s rights. The reality, however, is that this pronatal narrative, if left unchecked, has the potential to put us on a path towards women being stigmatised for their choices or even having their sexual and reproductive rights restricted. This is not just hyperbole – it is happening all over the world.

Pronatalist rhetoric is dangerous and is often laced with nationalism and prejudice. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, is actively encouraging the white, Christian, heterosexual population to reproduce. He does this through tax exemptions for families with more than four children, creating barriers to abortion, talking down education and economic equality for women, and all while trying to erase LGBT+ identities, demonising immigration, and espousing the racist “great replacement” theory.

Poland has had severely restricted access to abortions and contraceptives, a move linked by some to its population problems. In Turkey, the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that his wife’s “career is to give birth to children”. Abortion access has become much harder in Italy since Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won power last year, and her party has talked up Italian identity while demonising immigrants. Iran was censured by UN human rights bodies in 2021 for openly restricting access to family planning in an effort to boost its population. This year, its leaders have stigmatised the idea of having one child via its state-controlled news agency, and looked to crack down on terminations through an “abortion patrol”.

In June 2022 in the US, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that had protected women’s right to have an abortion. Among others, former vice-president Mike Pence has linked abortion with declining birth rates in the US.

Then there is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. Musk has fuelled pronatalists with his hyperbolic talk of population “collapse”, claiming that the Earth could hold 80 billion people (the current population is just over 8 billion) without destroying the rainforests, and supporting the suggestion that child-free people should have restricted voting rights as they have “little stake in the future”.

Musk has previously shown support for Orban’s policies to increase the birth rate and this year met with Hungarian president Katalin Novak. Musk is undoubtedly talented at many things but his comments on population growth show a deep lack of comprehension. Spurious claims of population “collapse” are negated by the fact we are still adding 80 million people to the world’s population every year, and the UN projects growth until 2086.

Another central tenet of the argument put forward by pronatalists revolves around ageing populations and faltering economies: who is going to pay for us as we get older? But where do they imagine this pyramid scheme of human beings will end? Those younger generations will in turn get old and require the same support, and so it goes on. There are undoubted challenges that come with ageing populations, but the answers can be found in positive, creative policies that place much greater value on older generations.

Pronatalist rhetoric only serves to stymie substantive, grown-up debate about population growth. According to the Global Carbon Atlas, the average person in the UK emits almost four times the amount of carbon annually compared to the average Indian citizen, and over 12 times that of the average Nigerian. With the UK also being one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, a declining birth rate here should be celebrated, for the benefit of both nature and our health and wellbeing.

What we need, but almost certainly won’t have, is an informed, rational debate about what population numbers mean. We need to talk about all their implications, and what we do about them, without social-media-fuelled “culture-war” framing. The right for people to have control over their own fertility – which means control over if, when and how many children they want to have – is key.

Ben Stallworthy is the digital and communications manager at Population Matters