The world’s most powerful men want women to have more babies

Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin all agree on one thing: Women should give birth more.All three world leaders recently released statements appealing to women to produce more offspring.That drive to have women push out more babies has also been promoted by people like Elon Musk.

Some of the world’s most powerful men have agreed on one thing: Women need to get to work producing as many children as possible, stat.

In the past month, the leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea have all made statements urging women to go forth and serve their countries by having children.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping led the way on this front, telling the Communist Party-linked All China Women’s Federation in October that women must help establish “new trend of family.”

On top of that, Xi said he wants the Chinese people to “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing and strengthen guidance on young people’s view on marriage, childbirth and family.”

On November 28, Russian leader Vladimir Putin urged Russian women to return to their roots and, like their “grandmothers and great-grandmothers,” have “seven, eight, or even more children.”

“Let us preserve and revive these excellent traditions. Large families must become the norm, a way of life for all of Russia’s people,” Putin said at the World Russian People’s Council in Moscow.

“Preserving and increasing the population of Russia is our goal for the coming decades and even generations ahead. This is the future of the Russian world, the millennium-old, eternal Russia,” he added.

And on December 4, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gave a rare acknowledgment of the country’s declining birth rate, exhorting the women of North Korea, too, to produce more children.

In a speech to the Fifth National Conference of Mothers, Kim praised North Korean women for their “jewel-like patriotic mind and precious sweat,” and for “painstaking efforts and merits they have made while giving birth to many children and bringing them up in the days of insufficiency and difficulties,” per The Pyongyang Times.

“When all mothers clearly understand that it is patriotism to give birth to many children and do so positively, our cause of building a powerful socialist country can be hastened faster,” Kim added.

It’s not just the politicians

Elon Musk.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Powerful men who inhabit other realms of influence have also been advocating for people to multiply. Elon Musk, a man who once said he intends to keep reproducing for as long as he can be a good father, might well be considered the most vocal voice in that crowd.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” Musk, the father of 10 known children with three different mothers, tweeted in July 2022.

This week, Musk also weighed in on the “morality” of DINK couples, which stands for “double income, no kids.”

“There is an awful morality to those who deliberately have no kids: they are effectively demanding that other people’s kids take care of them in their old age,” he wrote on X on Monday. “That’s messed up.”

Musk’s concerns are shared by others in the pronatalist movement, who believe the world faces real dangers from developed societies being underpopulated. In 2022, Business Insider’s Julia Black interviewed Simone and Malcolm Collins, a couple who want all of their descendants to have at least eight children for 11 generations in the hopes that they become a dominant bloodline on the planet.

Population problems

There’s a clear reason why these powerful men — especially country leaders — likely want more women to give birth.

This year, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics reported the country’s first population shrinkage since 1961, with an overall drop of around 850,000 people. The country also recorded a new low of 6.83 million marriages registered.

Xi has made major policy changes to address China’s falling birth rate. In 2016, his government ditched its one-child policy and started allowing couples to have two kids. In May 2021, the Chinese government announced another big change to its rules: Couples can have up to three children.

Russia is dealing with a different sort of population crisis: Its invasion of Ukraine caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country. The UK’s Ministry of Defence also estimated in October that 290,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine.

North Korea, meanwhile, saw its population’s fertility rate drop from 3.67 in 1955 to 1.79 in 2023. That drop, while steep, is less severe than the population crisis South Korea is facing. It seems Kim is plenty worried as is — he even shed a couple of tears during the conference when appealing for women to do their part.

But identifying why these powerful men want more women to have more babies is the easy bit. Getting women to actually do so — that’s the hard part.