Quote:“You do not want to give money to women," declared one leader of the movement to make more babies

Quote:The targeting of Head Start, a program that provides early childhood education and support for over 800,000 children, isn't a surprise to those who combed through the Project 2025 handbook. This blueprint for a second Trump term explicitly calls for the elimination of Head Start, hiding behind false claims that the program is somehow bad for children. But the driving animus the right has long harbored against Head Start was never focused on children, who benefit tremendously in both long-term measures like increased likelihood to attend college and short-term measures like improved self-esteem and self-discipline. No, the program has long been targeted by conservatives because it makes it easier for young mothers to have jobs or go to school, helping women secure economic independence.

Quote:[If some] well-worn arguments feel like a waste of pixels, it's because they are based on a false assumption: that "natalism" has anything to do with birthrates. Instead, natalism is a thin disguise for a movement whose real goal is to reinstate race and gender hierarchies that elevate white men above everyone else. That much was made clear during the presidential campaign, which featured an endless number of unearthed comments from now-Vice President JD Vance which showed his "natalism" was mostly just overt misogyny. He yelled about "childless cat ladies" and declared women shouldn't be able to leave men who beat them. He even agreed with a podcast host who argued that "the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female" is to help young mothers, so men don't have to bother with bedtimes and diapers.

Quote:The Post profile overlooked it, but Hope Not Hate dug even deeper and found that [Simone and Malcom Collins] suggested women not be allowed to own property, lambasted programs to reduce racial discrimination in hiring, and falsely suggested IQ scores are dropping as the U.S. population becomes more racially diverse. (The opposite is true, a fact so well-documented it has a name: the Flynn effect.) "You do not want to give money to women,” Malcolm Collins declared on one podcast.

Quote:The Collinses frequently speak at pro-natalist events, which also do a poor job of concealing the true, bigoted agenda under all this happy baby talk. As Gaby Del Valle reported in Politico last spring, this year's NatalCon featured a "mostly male audience," many "of whom are childless themselves." They speak a big game about creating "a culture in which child-rearing is paramount," but, of course, not for the men who want this change. That women will do most of the work is implicit. Indeed, that's not an unfortunate side effect, but the apparent goal.

Quote:The other giveaway is that these "natalists" don't care one whit about the well-being of children after they've served the purpose of sinking a woman's ambitions. That's why Musk is going so hard after Head Start, even though it's demonstrably good for children's health and economic futures. Or why Musk and his goon squad are attacking the Department of Education. Or why they're allied with an anti-vaccination activist like Kennedy. Or why they're trying to shut down USAID, whose programs are critical for allowing women in poorer countries to give birth safely to healthy babies.