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The Economist opines on whites having children

https://www.economist.com/1843/2025/11/06/make-america-procr...
derek pajeeter
  11/07/25
i'd read this but it's paywalled
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
As usual Birdshits need a Turd to figure shit out when its m...
AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White
  11/07/25
ty saar
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
...
AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
the “economist” can’t figure out why this ...
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
https://x.com/TheEconomist/status/1986831038576841202
....,,....,,...
  11/07/25
white people having children is "insidious." got i...
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
  11/07/25
...
turbo faggot
  11/07/25
...
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
...
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
insane
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
Thank u ITurd
emiliosexual
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
It's IITBombayTurd
AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
Seems like a pretty normal article. It's unique in our era ...
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
it's also unique in our era that birth control exists and pa...
chad gundam
  11/07/25
yeah it's amazing what an impact the pill had imo
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
no one talks abt this cause feminazis will get MAF, u dont e...
AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White
  11/07/25
calling people who want to procreate (the most basic and nor...
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
cr on "fertility fanatics". like the default now ...
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
...
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
...
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
Appears to be a man with major gay pedo face: https://www.ba...
Sweet Pajeet
  11/07/25
no functional difference
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
i hope you bros would stop me if i ever tried to do a pose l...
Kenneth Play
  11/07/25
wow that's crazy that a jewish female would publish an artic...
Mr. Content
  11/07/25
tp.
ethereal connection
  11/07/25
...
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
anyone else surprised to find out that scum journalists are ...
Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong
  11/07/25
i tried reading this but then realized its like the longest ...
AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White
  11/07/25
I have zero sympathy for pro-fertility sentiment but I can t...
OYT Magnus
  11/07/25


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Date: November 7th, 2025 2:59 PM
Author: derek pajeeter

https://www.economist.com/1843/2025/11/06/make-america-procreate-again-among-the-maga-fertility-fanatics

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410336)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:00 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

i'd read this but it's paywalled

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410340)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:02 PM
Author: AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White

As usual Birdshits need a Turd to figure shit out when its more complicated than 2+2

https://archive.ph/Pj4LT

Make America procreate again: among the MAGA fertility fanatics

Tech bros and religious conservatives have joined forces to boost the birth rate

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Nov 6th 2025

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27 min read

By Barclay Bram

Ordinarily Tim Adkinson, a trucker, sleeps in the back of his vehicle. But on a warm night at the end of March, he checked into a hotel in Austin, Texas. He had dressed up smartly: white linen shirt and chinos, hair brushed forward in an attempt to mask his receding hairline. On his wrist he wore a yellow paper wristband. This accessory was meant to signal to the people he’d meet that evening that he was single, open to dating and, most importantly, looking to procreate—a lot.

“I’m 32 years old and I haven’t had any kids,” Adkinson told me. We were sitting next to each other eating a dinner of roast chicken and broccoli in the auditorium of the Bullock Texas State History Museum. It was the opening ceremony of NatalCon, a two-day conference that tasked itself with “gathering the brightest minds in the world in search of new solutions” to the global fall in birth rates. The 200-strong crowd was full of self-proclaimed pro-natalists: those who believe that people (at least people like them) should be having more children, and that, if they don’t, society (at least as they know it) will collapse.

Adkinson, whose solitary life on the open road gives him a lot of time to think, was concerned that he was contributing to the problem. “You know, the alarm bells were going off. Like why hasn’t this happened for me?” There was a flash of vulnerability in his face. “It’s not just trucking,” he said. “It’s not me specifically. It’s everywhere.”

He had seen influencers speaking online about NatalCon, and decided to pay the $1,000 fee to attend. Matchmaking wasn’t the point of the conference; rather, it was billed as a serious academic affair that would feature pro-natalist thinkers, tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and people with the ear of the Trump administration. Still, Adkinson wanted to try his luck among a like-minded crowd. He filled out a Google Form that was sent out to single attendees before the opening ceremony, on which he listed his age, spiritual background and the number of children he wanted (from one to seven or more).

Now that he was here, though, he didn’t like his odds. “It’s like eight to one, men to women I swear,” he said, giving a cursory glance around the room. “I’ll give it a shot but I’m not holding my breath.”

Adkinson had voted for Donald Trump and described his own politics as “hard right”. In that sense, he might have found his people. The conference dining room was a jumble of libertarian tech workers and religious conservatives—representatives of the so-called tech-trad alliance that helped propel Trump to a second term in the White House.

Many governments have tried to bribe people to have more babies

For these political bedfellows, falling birth rates are an existential crisis, with potentially devastating consequences for the American economy, national security and the MAGA project. Tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen, Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel and, most famously, Elon Musk, have all publicly fretted about the issue, and funnelled money into companies and research initiatives that are developing reproductive technologies. Meanwhile, religious conservatives, like those at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank, have been pushing for policies that might, in theory, help expand the population—such as banning abortion and reducing subsidies for contraceptives.

The vice-president, J.D. Vance, is at the nexus of the tech-trad alliance. As a vocal convert to Roman Catholicism whose political career was supercharged by Thiel, his former boss, Vance has been thrilled to help make pro-natalism an explicitly MAGA issue. He has criticised prominent Democrats who don’t have biological children for being “childless cat ladies” (Taylor Swift then pointedly used the phrase in her endorsement of Kamala Harris last year); and he made a point of saying in his first public address as vice-president that “I want more babies in the United States of America.” Trump, in turn, has declared himself the “fertilisation president” and recently unveiled a plan to offer discounted fertility drugs through TrumpRx, the administration’s direct-to-consumer website, due to launch next year.

There was a sense among many at NatalCon that, with Trump and Vance in power, the moment to jump-start American baby-making had come at last. But those gathered outside the museum on the opening night of the conference had a different impression: that pro-natalism was part of a broader and more insidious project to create a whiter America. A group of protesters, their faces mostly covered, gathered in the museum’s courtyard. “Nazis off our campus!” they screamed through a megaphone as conference attendees streamed in. One sign read “Eugenicists” with the word “Natalists” crossed through.

Adkinson didn’t mind being heckled. “I’ve been called a Nazi at least 500 times in my life,” he told me with a shrug. He didn’t see what all the fuss over pro-natalism was about. “The message is simple: go have babies. And the left is going nuts!”

Globally, birth rates are falling. Recent analysis by The Economist suggests that, if current trends continue, the world population is likely to peak at 9.6bn in 2065, then tumble; it is even possible that it might stop growing in the 2050s and never exceed 9bn. America currently has a total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.6 children per woman, meaning that it is well below the replacement rate of 2.1—the standard estimate of what’s required to keep a population stable. But it is still more fecund than Europe or East Asia, parts of which are reckoning with TFRs of 1 or less.

In many ways, falling birth rates are a symptom of something positive—that more pregnancies are planned and more women are exercising agency over their lives. But the consequences of population decline are uncertain. If each generation is smaller than the previous one, there could be fewer workers to shoulder the burden of caring for the elderly and servicing public debt. AI might compensate for a fall in the number of humans, but it’s impossible to say by how much.

One way for a country to deal with a shrinking population is to let in more foreigners. But immigration is a contentious issue for voters around the world. Populist parties and leaders, particularly in Europe, often marry anti-immigrant sentiments with pro-natalist ones, arguing that “natives” having children is the best way to preserve national identity and culture.

Many governments have tried to bribe people to have more babies. South Korea—which has a TFR of 0.72, the lowest on Earth—has spent $270bn over the past 20 years on pro-na talist policies: subsidising taxis for pregnant women, providing free IVF and, in some towns, giving new mothers free housing. This year it began granting couples a cash payment of close to 30m won ($20,000) over eight years for each child they have. Viktor Orban’s government spends 6% of Hungary’s GDP on pro-natalist policies—including a lifelong exemption from income tax for mothers of two children or more.

These policies have had little effect. South Korea’s low birth rate has barely budged; Hungary’s is 1.56, lower than its neighbours Romania and Bulgaria, which have spent far less on promoting births. “Look, having a child is more like joining the military than going out to dinner,” Catherine Pakaluk, a speaker at NatalCon, told me. “That’s why cash incentives don’t work.” Pakaluk is a professor of political economy at the Catholic University of America, where her research touches on the economics of family and demography. “Women now have all of these wonderful options. Which is to be celebrated. But that renders childbearing a choice.”

To understand why people make that choice, Pakaluk interviewed 50 American women who had unconventionally large families, of at least five children. One of the things she found was that raising children is a learned skill—something she knew from experience, too. “I had lots of siblings, so I was always around children. I had a sense of what it would be like to have my own.” (Pakaluk now has eight children and six step-children.)

Pro-natalists fear that women in low-fertility countries are becoming accustomed to being around fewer children, and will, in consequence, find the prospect of having their own too daunting. The result, they say, would be a doom loop that will speed up the rate of native-population decline. This prospect has been particularly alarming to pro-natalists in America. Although the country has long considered itself a nation of immigrants, it is now in the midst of the sharpest nativist turn in recent memory, as the Trump administration tightens visa rules and deploys Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to bundle suspected illegal immigrants into vans for deportation.

“The message is simple: go have babies. And the left is going nuts!”

To Trump’s supporters, this makes the need for endogenous population growth urgent. Jack Posobiec is a far-right influencer who was a champion of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory (which alleges that top Democrats were involved in a child-sex ring) and is a confidant of Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence. On the first night of NatalCon he declared: “It’s not just a culture war, it’s not just a political skirmish. Let’s speak bluntly. We are in a war for civilisation itself.” And in that battle, “natalism is our sword and shield.”

The libertarians and religious conservatives at the heart of the tech-trad alliance have proved receptive to this message. They may have slightly different projects—with the trad contingent having large families in the belief that it accords with their faith (go forth and multiply), and their tech counterparts believing that large families composed of bright children and clever parents will lead to a more creative, productive society (go forth and innovate). But they are bound together by a strong sense that the decline in birth rates is a cultural issue: a symptom of liberal decadence and the short-sightedness of modern culture.

At NatalCon, the tech gurus were conspicuous, sporting T-shirts with their company logos and the occasional Patagonia gilet to guard against the aggressive air-con. So too were the religious conservatives, who were usually dressed in business casual, their pressed shirts neatly tucked in. The crowd was nearly all male and mostly white.

Women were present, but they were often herding gaggles of kids, who could be spotted weaving their way through groups of men chatting about children in abstract terms while politely ignoring the real ones at their feet. I met one woman who was a mother of nine, with a tenth on the way. She and her family had travelled from a small town in Texas, where they lived in what she described as a “raggedy farmhouse”. “It’s hard to meet other people who want families like ours,” she said. She saw the conference less as a political gathering and more as a way to build friendships with other super-max families. (Her husband then walked over, repeated that they weren’t there for political reasons and declined on her behalf to be interviewed further.)

Lyman Stone, a demographer and the head of the Pro-Natalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think-tank, knew the optics of the conference were unpromising. When we met up at NatalCon, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt that made him stand out from the crowd. “We’re getting together and all talking to each other about babies, which is kind of a weird thing to do, especially for a group that’s like, I don’t know, 70%, 80% men,” he chuckled.

He understood why women would balk at hanging out with pro-natalists. “A lot of people associate worries about low fertility with the end of women’s rights”—with a regressive vision of the future, or even the dystopia created by Margaret Atwood in her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, in which women are seen simply as baby-making machines. “That obviously turns a lot of women off to the whole conversation.”

Stone assured me that pro-natalism was consistent with protecting women’s rights, especially their right to have the families they want. At the same time, he said, his voice sincere, “A lot of the women who are highly pro-natal are also more interested in their role as mothers than in their role as conference attendees.” (He said his own wife fell into this camp and had chosen to stay at home with their children.)

The few women who did have a platform at NatalCon were either “trad wives”—the term for women who voluntarily embrace old-fashioned gender roles—or tech-world girlbosses, who were keen to show how deftly they were combining their large families with their jobs. One such career woman was Simone Collins, the former managing director of Dialog, a secretive members-only organisation co-founded by Peter Thiel. She took to the conference stage wearing a milkmaid’s bonnet—a sly nod to her detractors’ “Handmaid’s Tale” jibes—with a baby strapped to her back. It was her fourth child, a girl named Industry Americus (her two daughters have gender-neutral names). At the time, Simone was expecting her fifth baby. “Half of me wants to vomit and the other half wants to lie down on the stage,” she told the audience (she made it through her speech without incident, to rapturous applause).

Simone and her husband Malcolm are two of the most visible tech pro-natalists in America. Both in their late-30s, they wear thick black-rimmed glasses (Simone’s are round, Malcolm’s square). Together, they lobby investors and developers who they believe can engineer solutions to America’s falling birth rate. They also run the Collins Institute for the Gifted (which offers AI-led homeschooling), write books and host a podcast, and have invested in fertility-tech companies and a dating app for long-term partnerships between people who want children.

They were spurred to take up pro-natalism around a decade ago, when Malcolm was the director of strategy for a venture-capital fund in South Korea. His boss had asked him to model what the country would look like over the next five to ten decades—“you know, what will be the big industries. Basic VC stuff.” Malcolm remembers being struck by the country’s low birth rate. “It doesn’t look like Korea has an economy in a hundred years,” Malcolm told his boss, who he says shrugged it off. “That horrified me,” he said. It was too late to save South Korea, in his view—but he could do something for America.

“Having a child is more like joining the military than going out to dinner”

To garner attention for their cause, “people needed to hate us to have a reason to talk about us. So we kept doing things that we called media-baiting,” Malcolm said. The more controversy they caused, he reasoned, the more likely people would be forced to learn about falling birth rates and pro-natalist ideas.

That’s why he shrugged when I mentioned a Guardian profile of the couple, which revealed that he had slapped one of his children in front of the journalist. When the piece was published last year, it instantly went viral, causing people online to remark on the Collinses’ seeming dislike of their own children. “When you protect a person from any negative emotional stimulus, they’ll quickly spiral into anxiety and depression whenever they encounter difficulties in the real world,” Malcolm told me, by way of explanation for his actions.

I had wondered whether pro-natalism was more attractive to people in the tech industry, than to, say, other educated groups in America, because they are some of the few people who feel they can comfortably afford to have massive families. But it was clear that, even for a couple as affluent as the Collinses, some sacrifice was necessary to raise their brood. Rather than living in an urban tech hub, for instance, they had moved to rural Pennsylvania, where it was cheaper to buy a house large enough for a host of kids.

As Malcolm and I spoke, I noticed that the Collins children were wearing the same black polo shirt as their father. “Mostly we just have one outfit for the kids that can change with age,” he explained. I noted that that seemed like a pragmatic way to raise children. “We’re breeding at scale,” he responded matter-of-factly, “so we need to find ways to be frugal.”

The Collinses’ path into pro-natalism tracks transformations in Silicon Valley over the past few years, as the tech industry’s most prominent chief executives have become more visibly entwined with the Trump administration and the wider MAGA movement. Malcolm Collins told me that he didn’t find it difficult to move in the same world as the religious conservatives in Trump’s base: “It’s not a messy alliance. We’re not taking jabs at each other regularly. We all know each other.”

In both camps there was a sense that they had been fighting against the tide of mainstream liberal culture—what Musk has often referred to as “the woke mind virus”—and that they, with their heterodox views, were the true champions of diversity. “ A big part of why the tech and MAGA alliance works so well is because we both are just like, hey, leave us alone. Stop imposing your values on us and stop trying to get our kids to adopt your values.”

Still, some issues between them are tricky to reconcile, including IVF. The technology accounts for only 2% of American births, because it is expensive and often not covered by insurance. But some religious conservatives oppose it, as the process produces excess embryos—“unborn children”, in their eyes—that are often destroyed. The Heritage Foundation supported last year’s decision by the Alabama Supreme Court which ruled that frozen embryos have the same rights as living children; the decree has created confusion over appropriate storage methods and the legal liabilities those seeking IVF treatment might face.

Many of the religious conservatives at NatalCon took a more pragmatic approach to IVF, however, acknowledging that it attracts broad public support. As Peachy Keenan, one of America’s most famous trad wives, said in her NatalCon speech, “My best friend used IVF to build her family. I have IVF nieces.” In spite of her “serious moral qualms about the byproducts of the process”, she did not think it was something to block: “Neither I nor J.D. Vance nor the pope is going to outlaw IVF. That toothpaste is out of the fallopian tube.” Kevin Dolan—the conference’s organiser and a Mormon father of six, with a seventh on the way—concurred. “Religious conservatives know they’re in the wilderness. They know they won’t get to decide if people use IVF or other fertility technologies,” he told me.

Those other fertility technologies are often backed by tech gurus: Thiel has invested in 28, a period-tracking app, and Gaia, a platform that provides financing plans for those pursuing fertility care; Sam Altman, of OpenAI, has funded Conception, a company that is working on technology that would allow two men to become biological parents of a child. Musk—who moved his family and many of his companies to Texas in a pointed rebuke of California’s left-leaning politics—has donated $10m to the Population Wellbeing Initiative at the University of Texas, Austin. The project aims to conduct “foundational research” on topics such as “fertility, parenting and the future of population and economic growth”, in order to provide academic ballast to pro-natalist ideas.

Representatives of even the more controversial fertility technologies were clearly welcome at NatalCon. Around the buffet, which featured seared beef for those loading up on protein, I saw a few employees of Orchid, which sells whole-genome sequencing for embryos; they were identifiable by the company’s stylised bird logo on their T-shirts. Typically, whole-genome sequencing tests are performed once a child is born, to let parents know if their baby is at risk of potentially life-altering diseases. Orchid, in contrast, conducts these tests before an embryo is even implanted to ensure that those which are selected have the best chance of becoming healthy adults, should they be carried to term. The company also offers to screen embryos for “desirable” qualities like intelligence (many scientists are sceptical that this can actually be done).

It has been reported that Musk has used Orchid’s services as he attempts to do his bit for pro-natalism in his personal life—he has 13 or 14 children (that we know of) with four women (ditto). As Julia Black, a freelance reporter who writes about the tech world, explained to me at NatalCon: “Silicon Valley is obsessed with meritocracy. They also firmly believe in heritable traits and the role of genetics and markers like IQ. They’re firmly on the nature side of the nature versus nurture divide.”

“We are in a war for civilisation itself... natalism is our sword and shield”

In some ways, this obsession is understandable. Most parents would do anything to increase their chances of giving birth to a healthy baby who is likely to succeed in life. But critics are concerned that baby-enhancing technologies will be used before they are safe. Others worry that they will aggravate inequality by creating “superbabies” solely for the world’s elite, whose wealth would inevitably give them access to these technologies first.

Some even fear that this way of thinking about conception is only a hop, skip and a jump from eugenics. Orchid, for its part, strongly denies the suggestion, saying their work helps to prevent genetic diseases and that equating its work with eugenics is “historically illiterate and morally backwards”.

But Adam Rutherford, a professor of genetics at University College London, who has written books about eugenics, finds some similarities between ideas circulating in the 1920s and 1930s—which were driven by the sense that certain populations were entering terminal decline and needed to be saved by radical social engineering—and today’s pro-natalism, which is also anxious about who is and isn’t having children. “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 told me.

It was noticeable that at NatalCon—a conference that billed itself as finding solutions for the ”biggest global crisis”—almost all the speakers were white Americans. South Korea has celebrity demographers, for instance; why weren’t they speaking? (Kevin Dolan, the organiser, told me he had invited a broad spectrum of international speakers but declined to give specific names.)

At the same time, this year’s NatalCon featured a number of speakers known to espouse white supremacist or other objectionable views. One was Cremieux, a pseudonym for an online troll who has argued that “elites are genetically different” and that average national IQs in Africa are much lower than they are in other parts of the world.

NatalCon’s openness to such claptrap is perhaps less surprising in light of Dolan’s backstory. He once had an anonymous Twitter account where he posted white supremacist and homophobic content, and which he used to attack less observant Mormons (he was part of the DezNat movement, an ultra-conservative and nationalist group of fundamentalist Mormons). After being put on a list of internet extremists by the German intelligence services in 2021, he says he was doxxed by Mormon activists and fired from his job as a defence contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Dolan’s de-platforming “was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me”, he told me, because it led to the soul-searching that eventually sparked NatalCon. Soon after he lost his job he founded EXIT group, a men’s rights organisation, which describes itself as a “fraternity of like-minded men who take a short position in the present system and build for what comes next” (it offers fitness training, coaching on how to create a startup and “one-on-one matchmaking” to connect with an “on-side brain trust” of other members).

Dolan’s interest in pro-natalism really kicked off after he and his friends watched “The End of Men”, a documentary from 2022 created by Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host and current MAGA cheerleader. The film argues that endocrine disruptors are destroying male testosterone, creating a weak and pliant society that is ultimately doomed. It opens with a well-known conspiracy theorist and vaccine sceptic claiming that “there has been a 50% decline in sperm counts in the last 40 years along with a precipitous decline in testosterone production.” That fringe thinker, Robert F. Kennedy junior, is now health secretary. “We’re headed for a calamity,” he continued. “That’s not hyperbole. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s a mathematical fact.” (It isn’t.)

Dolan was shocked that population decline wasn’t a more mainstream concern. He noted that since his doxxing, he’s developed relationships with a number of people featured in the film. “What if I just got these really smart people together and we try to really hash this problem out from all angles?” he told me. When I asked him why NatalCon’s speaker roster involves some controversial thinkers, he attributed their presence to a similar thought process: “That’s an artefact of it being mostly my friends.” Didn’t he think he might need new friends? “Well, erm, maybe,” he said, before catching himself. “But not at the expense of my existing friends—I like them all.”

American pro-natalists have managed to gestate a powerful political idea—but they have yet to see the birth of many serious policies. Trump’s proposals to expand fertility care are just getting off the ground (in any case, it seems as if they will fall short of his campaign promise to make IVF treatment free). Vance has thrown other ideas around, like boosting the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000 per child and suggesting that parents should get more votes in elections than non-parents. Sean Duffy, the transport secretary, has said he will prioritise investment in places with higher birth rates. A more modest proposal is to award a “motherhood medal” to women with more than six children.

For Stone, the conservative demographer, it was still too early to expect pro-natalists to have coalesced around a core set of policy ideas. “Sorry to be an academic about this,” he said when we spoke, waving his hand at the NatalCon attendees milling behind us, “but I would describe this as a discursive space.” Paul Constance, who characterised himself as “the only progressive” at the conference, agreed. “There’s a lot of theatre and a lot of visionary talk about recovering our civilisation,” he told me, after taking me aside so that we could talk privately. “But show me Republican policymakers who have an aggressive or ambitious agenda to make it easier for people to have kids.”

“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’”

That fact that the American right has yet to agree on workable pro-natal policies should give progressives an opportunity to offer their own ideas. After all, many left-wing staples, such as universal health care and subsidised child care, could be cast as ways to encourage people to have more children. So far, though, progressives have ceded pro-natalism to the right. That’s partly owing to the stigma associated with it. “It has become so toxic,” said an anthropologist I met at NatalCon. ”I’m worried being here is tantamount to [endorsing] eugenics and scientific racism.” But it also seems that many either don’t see falling fertility as a problem, or don’t believe governments could do much about it if they tried. They are probably right to think so: for many people, the decision to have children is ultimately guided by emotion.

On the second day of NatalCon I met Saba, an Ethiopian woman dressed in a chic pin-striped suit. As the only black woman there, she had been swarmed all day by curious attendees and journalists. “Everyone has been super welcoming,” she told me, when I finally got a moment with her. “I guess I did get a few jokes about whether I’m a journalist or not. But hey, maybe they were asking everyone.” I can confirm they were not. People loved chatting to me—a blue-eyed white man—until they found out I was a journalist.

Saba has a high-powered finance job in Hong Kong, and used to work in New York and London. Some people at the conference would undoubtedly consider her a member of the metropolitan global elite; certainly her lifestyle was a world away from that of Tim Adkinson, the truck driver I sat with at the opening dinner. Yet she was also wearing a yellow wristband indicating that she was single. “We’re all facing this challenge in cities like New York or Hong Kong, where it is especially difficult with dating.” It was hard, she admitted, having had such a mobile career. “No regrets, but there are trade-offs.”

Like Adkinson, she was also now in her early 30s and single, without the family she had expected to have by this point. “I’m here because I need to really start thinking about this. If I want to have a large family, I can’t do that when I’m 37,” she told me. She knew the conference wasn’t her natural scene, but she wanted to form her own opinion of the people and ideas involved—to understand why she and her friends were having such a hard time dating. “I don’t like the idea that if I bring this up with my progressive friends there’s immediately this sense that what’s being asked is that we chain women to the stove and prevent them from working,” she said. She thought the conference was in fact attempting to get ahead of the problem—before the dystopian alternatives became the only options on the table.

Saba hadn’t met someone who had swept her off her feet yet, but she said she’d had some interesting conversations. As I turned to adjust my recorder, another suitor sidled up to her. I moved away—there was plenty for them to talk about. ■●

Barclay Bram is a senior podcast producer at The Economist.. Listen to his podcast “Hanging out with America’s pro-natalists” here

Illustrations Michael Glenwood



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410346)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:18 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

ty saar

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410407)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:20 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410425)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:21 PM
Author: AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410429)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:21 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410431)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:24 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)

the “economist” can’t figure out why this is undoubtedly a bad thing

“But the consequences of population decline are uncertain.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410440)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:26 PM
Author: ....,,....,,...

https://x.com/TheEconomist/status/1986831038576841202

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410446)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:40 PM
Author: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


white people having children is "insidious." got it, thanks.

"With Trump and Vance in power, many pro-natalists believe this is the moment to jump-start baby-making. But some critics see pro-natalism as part of an insidious project to create a whiter America"



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410491)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 4:35 PM
Author: turbo faggot



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410671)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 4:35 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410675)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 5:00 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410754)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 5:24 PM
Author: Kenneth Play



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410823)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 5:23 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

insane

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410822)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:31 PM
Author: emiliosexual

Thank u ITurd

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410453)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:34 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410460)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:37 PM
Author: AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White

It's IITBombayTurd



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410475)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:41 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410502)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:21 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

Seems like a pretty normal article. It's unique in our era that having kids (or a bunch of kids) is so rare

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410428)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:21 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410430)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:24 PM
Author: chad gundam (🧐)

it's also unique in our era that birth control exists and parents are expected to do shit like personally chauffeur children to every activity *and* attend the activity and monitor their every move to make sure they aren't falling into discord trannyholes and blah blah blah

"pronatalism", unless you're tossing people extremely large sums of money at people per child, is going to be a complete waste of time. if you're serious about it and think no kids means humanity is going to disappear in three gens you need to completely ban birth control. if you think it's a moderately pressing issue you need to normalize parents being less involved

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410441)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:30 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

yeah it's amazing what an impact the pill had imo

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410451)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:36 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410469)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:39 PM
Author: AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White

no one talks abt this cause feminazis will get MAF, u dont even have to propose that maybe its wrong permitting the pill, maybe women shld just be baby making machines as allah intended. u cant even discuss this in the "freedum" loving west. its veddy lolzy, u literally introduced a pill that 99% destroys pregnancy unlike anything before and then u wonder why there's declining birthrates but u cannot talk abt this

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410484)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:26 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)

calling people who want to procreate (the most basic and normal of human instincts) “fertility fanatics” is completely degenerate

just like the Jewish woman who wrote this drivel

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410445)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:35 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

cr on "fertility fanatics". like the default now is to be childless

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410465)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:36 PM
Author: ethereal connection



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410466)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:37 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410474)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:41 PM
Author: Sweet Pajeet

Appears to be a man with major gay pedo face: https://www.barclaybram.com/ https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/barclay-bram

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/568d511240667a544998cf8d/1567275127143-SVASQQCD1VC6UI41IF9A/IMG_8171.JPG?format=2500w

https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_220x220/public/assets/images/profile/barclay_bram_headshot_2022_0.jpeg?itok=qvo2ektr

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410500)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 4:36 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)

no functional difference

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410677)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 5:25 PM
Author: Kenneth Play

i hope you bros would stop me if i ever tried to do a pose like the second one

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410827)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:32 PM
Author: Mr. Content

wow that's crazy that a jewish female would publish an article in "the economist" about how white people having white children is intrinsically evil

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410456)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:34 PM
Author: ethereal connection

tp.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410459)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:37 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410476)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:41 PM
Author: Charlie Kirk Did Nothing Wrong (TDNW)

anyone else surprised to find out that scum journalists are still doing the refutation in parentheses without any evidence thing?

“That fringe thinker, Robert F. Kennedy junior, is now health secretary. “We’re headed for a calamity,” he continued. “That’s not hyperbole. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s a mathematical fact.” (It isn’t.)”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410496)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 3:46 PM
Author: AZNgirl Raping Taj Mahal because it's White

i tried reading this but then realized its like the longest article ive ever seen the furkign faggy economist publish

dont really know what to say other than article as usual overlooks how u have to put women in their place if u want to change this. they quote some shitlib feminazi professor sayingits GREAT women have choices, ljl no. they shld have no choice. there is no choice. u r female, ur job is to have furking children, not go to univ or work to enrich jews

the west will never admit this so it is finished, completely finished. the entire humanity may be finished, but no one alive today cares cause it wont happen until 2100s

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410520)



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Date: November 7th, 2025 4:41 PM
Author: OYT Magnus ( )

I have zero sympathy for pro-fertility sentiment but I can tell you that an alcoholic homeless Indian barking polemics at women that they should be incubating more TTs is not gonna move the needle imo.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794654&forum_id=2.#49410687)