WASHINGTON (news agencies) —
While the Trump administration explores ways to encourage Americans to have more babies and reverse the United States’ falling birth rate, a new poll finds that relatively few U.S. adults see this as a priority or share the White House’s concerns.
Instead, Americans are more likely to want the government to focus on the high cost of child care and improving health outcomes for pregnant women, according to the survey from media-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Pronatalism, or the promotion of childbearing, has gained traction as a movement within the tech world and among some religious conservatives. Prominent figures on the right like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance have espoused pronatalist beliefs, arguing more children are good for society.
The survey finds that only about 3 in 10 Americans say declining birth rates are a “major problem” in the U.S., and just 12% say that encouraging families to have more children should be “a high priority” for the federal government.
Republicans also see affordable child care and health outcomes for pregnant women as higher government priorities than promoting more births, indicating that even as conservatives push pronatalist policies, they’re not getting much buy-in from the GOP base.
“In this day and age, it’s not dire,” said Misty Conklin, a supporter of President Donald Trump, of the declining birth rate.
Conklin, 50, lives in Indiana and thinks the government should prioritize making it more affordable to raise children, including supporting the social services her disabled granddaughter needs.
“It’s hard to live as just a couple, let alone with children,” Conklin said. “It’s getting worse and worse.”
Americans are more concerned about the cost of raising and caring for a child than the number of babies being born, the survey found.
About three-quarters of U.S. adults say the cost of child care is a “major problem.” That includes about 8 in 10 Democrats and women, as well as roughly 7 in 10 Republicans and men.
Policies like free or low-cost daycare for children who are too young to attend public school and paid family leave are also popular with about two-thirds of Americans.
For Maria Appelbe, a Trump voter in Arizona, child care costs factored into her decision to quit her job to care for her daughter when she was younger. The 49-year-old said, “I was lucky enough that back in those days without inflation, we were able to make it work.”
Americans seem to have few opinions about the number of children families should have. Demographic projections have indicated the country’s replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, which would keep the population from shrinking over the long term. However, in the survey, there aren’t strong opinions about whether it’s “mostly a good thing” or “mostly a bad thing” for families to have fewer than two children or more than two.
Appelbe, who has one teenager, thinks financially it makes sense to have small families. “I’m so glad that I was able to give her everything that I could, but I definitely think if I had more children, I wouldn’t have been able to,” she said.
