Elon Musk, the controversial billionaire known for his high-profile business ventures and inflammatory tweets, has found a new cause to champion: extreme breeding. With a brood of 12 children (and counting), Musk is on a mission to convince Americans – especially young people – to prioritize procreation above all else. “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness,” the Tesla CEO recently declared on Twitter.
While Musk is certainly entitled to his personal obsession with fathering an ever-growing number of mini-Musks, his increasingly vocal views on breeding are raising alarm bells among reproductive rights advocates. They fear that Musk, who has cozied up to Donald Trump and been granted an influential advisory role in the upcoming administration, could use his clout to push an extreme pro-natalist agenda at the policy level.
A Breeding Fetish with Misogynistic Overtones
Musk’s breeding fixation isn’t just a numbers game; it’s rooted in some deeply problematic ideas about gender roles and women’s autonomy. He’s become a prominent figure in the “pro-natalist” movement, which overlaps uncomfortably with eugenics and argues that educated, wealthy people (especially white ones) have a duty to reproduce as much as possible. Pro-natalists often express disdain for career-focused women who delay or forego motherhood.
Under the guise of “preventing population collapse,” pro-natalism pushes regressive notions of a woman’s purpose being primarily to bear children. Musk himself has sired offspring with three different women so far, in an arrangement that allows him to satisfy his breeding drive while outsourcing the actual labor of pregnancy, childbirth, and hands-on parenting.
Musk seems to want a say in Americans’ sex lives … What sort of lessons would that entail? Teaching people that while a woman dies every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth, it’s childlessness you should be afraid of?
– According to a source familiar with Musk’s views
Are Women Just Womb Vessels?
By publicly promoting fertility and shaming the childless/child-free, Musk sends the message that a woman’s value lies in her ability to reproduce. His disregard for the very real medical risks of pregnancy and childbirth – the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, and it’s only getting worse – betrays his detachment from the physical toll involved.
Even women in Musk’s intimate circle aren’t immune from callous treatment in service of his breeding goals. Singer Grimes, mother of two of Musk’s children, nearly died from complications during her first pregnancy – prompting the pair to use a surrogate for their next child. But any concern for his partner’s wellbeing evidently took a backseat to Musk’s drive to reproduce, risks be damned.
A Hands-Off Father Figure
For all his enthusiasm about bringing more children into the world, Musk seems markedly less interested in the hard work of actually raising them. With six kids under age six and a demanding career running multiple companies, it’s simply not feasible for him to be a hands-on parent to his sprawling brood.
While he’s been happy to parade his photogenic infants through Mar-a-Lago, Musk appears to leave the day-to-day parenting duties to his female partners and employees. He’s also publicly disavowed his transgender daughter, declaring her “dead to me” after she made the decision to transition.
Being a sperm donor is very different from being a parent . . . Musk seems intent on worming his way into our wombs.
– A critic of Musk’s breeding agenda, who requested anonymity
A Trojan Horse for Attacking Reproductive Rights?
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of Musk’s breeding boosterism is how neatly it dovetails with the anti-abortion, anti-contraception crusade of the far right. The incoming Trump administration has made no secret of its plans to roll back reproductive rights and usher in a new era of forced birth – and Musk, with his massive fortune and loyal right-wing fan base, could be uniquely positioned to help mainstream extremist pro-natalist views.
By infiltrating the highest levels of government and pushing the message that motherhood is a woman’s greatest calling, Musk and his allies could provide a pseudo-scientific rationale for dismantling abortion access, slashing funding for family planning services, and enacting policies that trap women in a state of perpetual pregnancy and child-rearing.
It would be easy to dismiss Musk’s breeding obsession as yet another eccentricity of the erratic mega-billionaire. But in an era of ascendant authoritarianism and escalating attacks on bodily autonomy, pro-natalist zealotry is a Trojan horse for the systematic subjugation of women and other marginalized groups. Musk may try to cloak his agenda in the language of “saving humanity,” but make no mistake: his vision of the future is a patriarchal dystopia where women are reduced to womb vessels in service of a eugenic breeding program. As he cements his status as a GOP power player, it’s more critical than ever to call out the rank misogyny behind Musk’s reproducing-above-all-else dogma – before he has the chance to impose it on an unwilling nation.
