Has the pronatalism movement gone mainstream?
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2025
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s well known that childcare has become extraordinarily expensive, costing many families nearly a quarter of their income. The fertility rate, as we've covered previously on The Excerpt, remains at a historic low. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is floating a range of ideas to encourage people to have more children while encouraging women to stay home to care for them. Have these trends paved the way for the pronatalism movement to gain traction? Karen Guzzo, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, joins The Excerpt to share her expertise on the movement. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to [email protected].
Episode Transcript available here
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, May 18, 2025. |
| 0:17.3 | It's well known that child care has become extraordinarily expensive, costing many families nearly a quarter of their income. A recent study out from Lending Tree estimated that it costs $300,000 to raise a child over the course of 18 years. The fertility rate, as we've covered on the excerpt, remains at an historic low. The Trump |
| 0:39.1 | administration is also floating ideas to encourage people to have more children, such as a baby |
| 0:44.8 | bonus. Have these trends paved the way for the pronatalism movement, which is having a moment? |
| 0:51.2 | Karen Guzzo, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, |
| 0:54.8 | Chapel Hill, is here to purse this out with us. Thanks for joining me, Karen. |
| 0:58.8 | Yes, happy to be here. |
| 1:00.7 | First, can you describe what the pronatalism movement is and the views at the people who |
| 1:06.8 | supported a spouse? So pro-natalism is really about raising birth rates at the country level, |
| 1:13.6 | at the sort of macro level. It's interested in and worried about are birth rates too low? Do they |
| 1:20.5 | need to be higher? And there's a lot of debate over what it means for fertility rates to be too |
| 1:25.8 | low and what might be the best ways to address it. |
| 1:28.3 | That's really focused on getting the whole country to have more births. |
| 1:32.3 | It's costly to choose to have a child, let alone several. |
| 1:36.3 | Is that just one of the reasons why people are having fewer kids today? |
| 1:41.3 | What is your research shown on family trends? Well, one of the things that's actually driving low fertility rates in the United States |
| 1:48.8 | is something that's a good news story, which is that there are fewer teen and unintended |
| 1:53.2 | births. And so births to people who are in their teens and early 20s typically are births |
| 1:58.5 | to people that are unintended, so that people themselves |
| 2:01.6 | would say, this is not really the right time for me. And so we spent a lot of time and a lot of |
| 2:06.1 | money in the United States trying to discourage people from having first when they were not really |
| 2:10.5 | ready. So when they were too young, and I sort of, too young in quotes, too young, or they |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from USA TODAY, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of USA TODAY and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.