Collective Care & Family Formation: Natal Gazing's Darby Saxbe Discusses Progressive Approaches to Falling Birth Rates

Redefining Family Values: Why Support Systems Matter More Than Rhetoric

1. Progressive pronatalism supports family formation through policies like paid leave and childcare.

2. Collective care and intergenerational support (e.g., grandparents helping with childcare) have been shown to positively impact birth rates and child outcomes.

3. Reproductive healthcare access, including abortion, is compatible with pronatalism as restrictive policies create "maternity care deserts" that make pregnancy more dangerous.

4. Universal paid family leave is identified as the single most impactful policy intervention that could support families and improve birth rates in the United States.

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Dave Deek: Good morning. I have Darby from Natal Gazing.

Dave Deek: Your article, A progressive vision for pronatalism, suggests that pronatalism is an issue progressives should engage with rather than dismiss. Before we go more into the topic, what drew you to this issue in the first place and why do you think it's important for those on the left to develop their own natalist vision?

A progressive vision for pronatalism

Darby Saxbe: I've been really concerned about the drop in birth rates that we've seen not just in the United States but globally over the last couple of decades. I think it creates problems in a few different ways. It certainly affects our economic security in the future to have more retirement-age people than young people. It also affects us culturally. The sense of a culture that is slowing down and failing to reproduce itself fits with a larger epidemic of meaninglessness and disconnection that many young people are reporting. The fact that young people aren't as interested in starting families is a real sign of that sense of disconnection.

Darby Saxbe: I'm a progressive, but I'm also someone who loves being a parent. I think that being a parent is a really important job. I get frustrated because it often feels like the right claims to own "family values" while blocking many of the policies that would make families' lives easier—opposition to paid family leave, opposition to high-quality child care, subsidized college, subsidized health care—things that we know other countries do that are really good for making families' lives easier.

Darby Saxbe: Frequently there are stereotypes coming from the right that progressives or feminists are anti-family values, that feminists hate men and babies and don't think families are good, and that women should all be in jobs. I actually think that's not true. Many progressives like me are very pro-family, but we have failed to fully articulate what a pro-family suite of policies would look like. Certainly, a lot of the safety net policies are very good for families, but we haven't necessarily grouped them under an explicitly pro-family or pronatal umbrella. That's what made me interested in trying to articulate what a progressive version of pronatalism would look like.

Darby Saxbe: The other thing I've noticed with some of the pronatalist rhetoric on the right is that it can have racist overtones. It's often very anti-immigration. It's about not just having more births, but having more of the "right kinds" of births. I think there's a way to have a more pluralistic version of pronatalism because it's really a global concern.

Dave Deek: Thank you for that. I have a couple of thoughts here. When it comes to progressive pronatalism, don't we already have longtime figures like Hayao Miyazaki, who has been talking about this for decades—about how young people aren't starting families, aren't having kids—and from a pluralistic, non-nationalistic sense?

Dave Deek: And on the other hand, aren't leading right-wing pronatalists like Lyman Stone much more pluralistic and less focused on the eugenics side, while fringe members like the Collinses are the ones talking about eugenics and attacking folks like Lyman Stone for not being down with their plan?

Darby Saxbe: I think it's a crowded field of thinkers, and people are coming at this from lots of different angles. You have the nativist, more Christian nationalist version of pronatalism, which is really about propagating more white people essentially to "save civilization"—there are people who believe that. You have the more techno-futurist version of pronatalism, which is more open to things like gene editing and IVF. You have some progressives in the mix, but I think a lot of the loudest voices have tended to be on the right. And I think they've used the pronatalist banner to advance a lot of sexist and eugenicist arguments.

Bipartisan Approaches and Collective Care

Dave Deek: You've written that we need a bipartisan effort to address falling birth rates. In that context, especially in our politically polarized environment, what common ground do you actually see?

Darby Saxbe: I actually think there's quite a bit of common ground. This is one area where I feel hopeful. Now that people on the right are more concerned about natalism and the birth rate, I think they're more open to family policies that historically they've opposed. Paid family leave has been a real rallying issue on the left for quite some time. I think for the first time, starting around 2016, you started to hear people in the Republican party champion it as well. They haven't managed to make it happen, but I think there's more energy around it than there has been in quite some time because everybody on both sides is concerned about the birth rate.

Dave Deek: On that topic, I remember in your articles you emphasize collective care as central to progressive pronatalism. That reminds me of pre-COVID policies in the Czech Republic. They had family policies centered around getting grandparents to help with kids and getting towns involved in collective care. How much do you see that as something we can adapt, and how do you think we need to adjust our policies and cultural narratives to better recognize that we need collective care in the first place?

Darby Saxbe: I think certainly throughout much of history, kids were cared for through intergenerational networks of kin. The fact that we don't have that as the norm is a paradigm shift from how humans have lived for centuries. There are some policies that could facilitate moving back to that model.

Darby Saxbe: One would be if caregivers were eligible for some kind of paid disability or sick leave to stay home with a family member, or if kin could have access to family leave. Some of those policies have been tried in other countries, and I think they're good for kids because it's beneficial for children to have caregivers who are really invested in their welfare.

Dave Deek: That actually reminds me of a few other cases that confirm what you're saying. I believe in Spain, grandparents who are more able to help out means their adult children have more children. In Vietnam, there's a study showing if you subsidize grandparents to take care of grandchildren, their adult children end up having more kids. I know that in Israel, when someone loses their father or mother, they're less likely to have kids.

Darby Saxbe: Absolutely. There's also a lot of research suggesting that when kids have a living grandmother, it reduces child mortality. The "grandmother effect" research shows one reason that women have evolved to live decades past menopause, when their own reproductive window has closed, is that they are really helpful alloparents when it comes to helping with their kids' kids. We know that kin care is really beneficial and a very natural childcare arrangement that has been around for millennia.

Family Benefits Policies and Birth Rates

Dave Deek: Going back to countries with more generous family benefits, you say they're still facing declining birth rates. On that topic, we know that post-COVID is a whole different story for obvious reasons. Pre-COVID, we saw the Czech Republic and Hungary were able to boost their fertility rates for a time period up until COVID. We also see Japan's birth rates rising once Abe took control and did a good job slowly boosting birth rates until Japan hit a recession in 2015. Is the idea that countries with generous family benefits still face declining birth rates still valid if we see that countries, even temporarily, managed to boost birth rates?

Darby Saxbe: I think there are many different factors that contribute to birth rates. We certainly see that birth rates are declining globally, and the pandemic was an inflection point for that. Some countries like France are good examples of having relatively higher birth rates than neighboring European countries. They've had a long history of pronatalist policy with generous family benefits and pro-family cultural values.

Darby Saxbe: However, the correlation between family policy and birth rates is often not as strong as we might expect. There are countries with generous benefits to families where birth rates are still falling, and there are countries with less generous benefits where birth rates are also falling. It's falling across the board, and it seems challenging for countries to find the right levers to ameliorate that.

Dave Deek: But then again, I remember writing summary articles about research around this. I saw to my shock that around 2010-2011, a bunch of countries even with some of the most generous birth benefits like France, Denmark, and Germany all cut down their family benefits policies. Especially with Macron pushing for a more means-tested or restrictive child allowance back in 2013 when he was part of the Socialist Party. Of course, now he's rolling that back and trying to boost child benefits again. I'd like to note that when the Great Recession hit, a lot of countries started cutting family benefits first, and we're starting to see the same with COVID. People say generous family benefits don't affect birth rates, but...

Darby Saxbe: That makes sense. When you take benefits away, you see birth rates fall. It's a tricky question even with empirical data because there are so many factors that drive birth rates. Birth rates fell after the Great Recession, which is around the time period you're talking about where countries cut benefits. So did they fall because benefits got cut, or because the economies in those countries were weaker? It could be both or either.

Darby Saxbe: I've definitely seen the argument that in some ways, even the most generous benefits are actually not generous enough because the opportunity cost associated with having kids is so high when you're in the workforce. So maybe the reason we haven't seen huge differences afforded by benefits is because we haven't tried the right size benefits.

Dave Deek: I think Lyman Stone loves making that argument even though he's on the right. But let's move on to make the most of our time.

Education, Personal Experience, and Gender Gaps

Dave Deek: You've written about your personal experience having children during grad school. How did this experience shape your thinking about the relationship between education, career development, and family formation? Especially after you wrote an article criticizing the Heritage Foundation for arguing that the more education women have, the lower birth rates—when current research in developed countries shows a pattern of educated women actually having higher birth rates.

Darby Saxbe: The policy prescriptions that the Heritage Foundation suggested in their article—which include getting rid of student loan programs for graduate education, moving away from student debt cancellation, and deregulating education—I see no evidence those would be good solutions for increasing birth rates. That's a place where Lyman Stone and I completely agree. He commented on my article saying "this is right," even though we might be coming from different political angles.

Darby Saxbe: My own experience of having kids in grad school was that being a graduate student and a postdoctoral trainee were actually great times to have kids and start a family because my schedule was much more flexible than it would have been at other times, either earlier in school or when I was in the workforce.

Darby Saxbe: The biggest problem I had was that I couldn't get paid leave, because I fell through the cracks in terms of benefits. As a graduate student, I was doing a predoctoral training year at a VA hospital where I was classified as a federal employee. So I couldn't get any of California's state disability benefits—I wasn't legally eligible because I was employed federally. And I also hadn't been at the VA long enough to get leave through the VA. So I basically couldn't qualify for anything.

Darby Saxbe: I actually fell into the same situation as a postdoc because I was on a federal training grant. Again, I was classified as a federal employee, couldn't get state benefits, but also couldn't get paid leave through my grant. I have direct experience of falling through the cracks when it comes to family benefits, and it made it much more stressful for me to be a parent in both cases. I really wanted to be a parent and have kids, and it would have been good timing for me, but because of the lack of comprehensive paid leave, it was a much more difficult time than it needed to be.

Dave Deek: That aligns with a lot of research I've been reading, especially on how higher-income women are having higher birth rates because they have that flexibility and security that you and others have been denied. On that note, what do you think about the trend of educated women having more children, even though many say that's not happening, when the research shows it is a growing trend?

Darby Saxbe: I think that goes back to what you were saying about higher-income women with higher job status being able to have more flexibility. They have more autonomy and are more likely to be able to work from home for a period of time or negotiate with their workplaces. That's a good example of where the economic arguments would suggest high-income women shouldn't have kids, but if they have a certain level of status, control, and autonomy in their workplace, they're more able to do so.

Dave Deek: You've also highlighted the concerning drop in male educational attainment. How do you think that affects declining marriage and birth rates?

Darby Saxbe: I think the gender gap is a big concern in many ways. It's affecting our politics, birth rates, and marriage rates. You have this trend of men losing their connection to social institutions like education and the workforce, making these men less attractive as mating prospects. That in turn is lowering the marriage rate, which we know is a major correlate of the birth rate.

Darby Saxbe: It's a really concerning social trend. Richard Reeves has written extensively about it and done really good work on this. I don't necessarily know what the solution is, but it seems like you don't want to have a society where the gap between men and women is really acute and growing.

Progressive Values and Reproductive Healthcare

Dave Deek: Let's circle back to progressive values and the broader pronatalist community. Despite some progressive figures like (again) Hayao Miyazaki—the guy behind anti-fascist, pro-environmentalist work like Princess Mononoke, which I'm planning to watch in 4K soon—already aligned with pronatalism, the broad progressive movement still worries that embracing natalism means abandoning environmental concerns about population growth or reproductive autonomy. How do you respond to that?

Darby Saxbe: A lot of the original concern about birth rates came from environmentalist concerns. I think those are legitimate concerns, but I think it's a matter of political will to create a cleaner and greener economy with more automation. I think we're already moving in that direction. So I don't necessarily see an environmentalist agenda as being at odds with the goals of pronatalism.

Dave Deek: Many people argue that reproductive healthcare, including abortion access, isn't compatible with pronatalism. I disagree with that myself, considering that if you're making it harder for people to have children or control when they have children, you're going to scare people away from having children altogether. Could you elaborate on this issue?

Darby Saxbe: I think you said it really well—if you're going to make it scarier to have kids, then fewer people are going to want to have kids or go through pregnancy.

Darby Saxbe: The other thing that is well-documented is that when there are really punitive anti-abortion laws in particular states, OBGYNs don't want to practice in those states. They don't want to train there or set up practices there. So you end up with a problem that's already happening in a lot of rural areas especially—these "maternity care deserts" where if you're pregnant and need to deliver a baby, you can't find a hospital within 100 miles that can give you adequate prenatal care and where you can deliver your infant. That's a huge problem if you go into labor in the middle of the night and live hours away from the closest hospital.

Darby Saxbe: These abortion laws actually make that problem worse because they make particular states very unattractive to providers. It also means that providers know they could be criminalized if they intervene with a pregnancy that is leading to miscarriage, for example, so they're afraid to practice care. It's taking power away from physicians and putting it in the hands of politicians.

Cultural Shifts and Policy Recommendations

Dave Deek: Beyond specific policies like paid leave or childcare, you've mentioned the need for deeper engagement with existential issues about finding meaning, relationships, and families. What cultural shifts do you think need to happen to help address these deeper causes of fertility decline?

Dave Deek: And the last question would be, if you could just implement one policy or initiative that you believe would make the biggest difference in supporting family formation, what would it be and why?

Darby Saxbe: Those are two really great questions.

Darby Saxbe: For your first question about how to shift culture to help people cultivate more meaning and purpose—I think we're in this late capitalist stage of being very materialistic and transactional as a culture. People are very focused on what they can buy and what they can own. There needs to be a certain amount of counterprogramming in our cultural narratives that having a lot of possessions and amassing wealth doesn't actually make people that much happier. We know from research that there are diminishing returns above a certain level of wealth.

Darby Saxbe: What makes people happier and longer-lived is having strong connections, strong families, having a partner that you care about, having people that you're taking care of. We know this from lots of research, and I think part of what we can do is just share that research more broadly. This needs to happen on both the left and right.

Darby Saxbe: Sometimes the political sides in the United States play off against each other. If the right is claiming to be pro-family and family values, then the left decides it's going to give up that ground. I don't think that's right. I think everybody needs to be talking about the interests of families—it doesn't have to be politically polarized. We need to do better cultural narrative communication around what actually makes people happy, and that also goes to how we talk to our kids and approach parenting and education—trying to keep a values-forward perspective with an emphasis on meaning and purpose.

Darby Saxbe: In terms of your second question, to me, the biggest no-brainer, low-hanging fruit policy intervention in the United States is universal paid family leave. Pretty much every other industrialized country has managed to do it, including many countries that are less wealthy than we are. We've left it up to a patchwork of states, but there are a lot of families that fall through the cracks. Many families don't qualify for FMLA, and people have leave through their employers, but that means if you're a gig worker, a shift worker, if you work at Walmart, or somewhere without great benefits, you basically get no paid time off after a baby is born.

Darby Saxbe: When you look at the norms in other countries, especially the Nordic countries where parents get a year or more to stay home with kids, it's no surprise that their children are doing so much better than ours when it comes to educational outcomes and social-emotional outcomes. Just looking like other peer OECD nations when it comes to family leave policy would be a really huge first step in the right direction.

Dave Deek: That's fantastic. I'm so happy to have you on. I think I'm going to stop here because we don't have enough time for me to talk about everything I would love to discuss. Thank you so much.

Darby Saxbe: Thank you so much for reaching out to me. It was great to chat with you.

Dave Deek: All right.

Edit: Resolved Title Issues

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