Elon Musk has his 'legion.' How will Republicans encourage other Americans to have babies?

Elon Musk says the world needs more babies, and he is doing his level best to help the cause. The world's richest man has fathered at least 14 children with four women. Pronatalist Republicans increasingly see him as a champion for their cause.

"Multiple sources" say it is likely the "true number of Musk's children is much higher than publicly known," said The Wall Street Journal. He reportedly refers to all those children as his "legion" and says they are "relevant to his ambition for NASA" to send humans to Mars. That effort, Musk has said, is "critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity and all life as we know it." And "helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence" is part of that mission, said the Journal.

That makes Musk the "country's most famous pronatalist," said The New York Times. With President Donald Trump in the White House and Musk at his side, the pronatalist movement has "never had so much political power in America." Family-minded GOP officials are contemplating offering a $5,000 "baby bonus" for new children and creating public education efforts about "menstrual cycles and fertility windows." Musk's prominence in the Trump administration is "enormously encouraging to those who want their cause to hit the mainstream."

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What did the commentators say?

There is a difference "between being pro-natalist and being pro-family," said Elizabeth Bruenig at The Atlantic. The pronatalist movement breaks down along "tech versus trad, future versus past, reproduction versus family" lines. Conservative Christian "trads" have long "animated" the GOP, but tech people like Musk have "more resources and power to market their ideology." Musk's own values, meanwhile, appear to be "detached from the usual ties of familial love" that trads embrace. One thing that is clear is that most of the billionaire's fans "won't be able to replicate the scale of his bloodline empire."

"Pronatalists focus on the numbers game," said Haley Strack at the National Review. That is why one of the proposals now contemplated by the Trump administration includes giving a "National Medal of Motherhood" to women who have given birth to six or more children. If the president wants Americans to have more children, his administration would be better off thinking about how to "address the indirect costs of parenthood, and how to create a baby-friendly culture." He should also take recommendations from pro-family advocates "for whom children are not just numbers."

What next?

The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics reported that the "number of births in 2023 fell to the lowest level in over 40 years," said Newsweek. "Low birth rates will end civilization," Musk said in a post on X.

Cuts driven by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have "slashed" a number of existing fertility and maternal health programs, said The Washington Post. Maternal health experts said the cuts "will have an enduring effect on women and children." They worry that other resources, including a maternal health phone line operated by the federal government, may also soon be shuttered. "We truly can't overstate the risk for families," said Wendy Davis, the CEO of Postpartum Support International.