In late-July 2024, a video resurfaced of Tucker Carlson’s 2021 interview with then-Senate candidate JD Vance in which he complained, “We’re effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” Given that Vance had just been selected as Donald Trump’s running mate, the outcry was swift. Democrats immediately turned “childless cat lady” into a badge of honor, complete with T-shirts, hats, and signage, drawing comparisons to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment that mobilized the MAGA base in 2016.

But many may have been too distracted by the misogynistic accusation that childless women are miserable to understand the real point of Vance’s comments, and just as importantly, who would find them most compelling. In the 2021 video, Vance went on to explain that the Democratic leadership (citing Harris, Buttigieg, Ocasio-Cortez) had never had biological children, and therefore, “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance’s real point wasn’t that childless women are bitter, but that having children makes you more invested in the nation, and thus, more politically deserving. This was made clear in another resurfaced video of Vance proposing that parents should have more votes because their commitment to the nation’s future is greater.

These comments imply a connection between childbearing and nationalism. Those who produce children are truly committed to the nation, and thus, national power and privilege rightfully belong to them. Autocratic leaders around the world like Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban have made similar claims, promising large financial rewards for families who make more native-born Russians and Hungarians.

To be sure, Vance’s group-centered pronatalism has recently drawn applause from the growing number of secular, mega-wealthy pronatalists like Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen, and other tech bros who have insisted that we must reverse declining birth rates to save civilization. But this idea of having babies for your nation, your tribe, your people has appealed to the Christian Right for decades. And in fact, Americans who demonstrate a commitment to the Christian Right’s underlying ideology—Christian nationalism—are the most likely to endorse the nationalistic pronatalism promoted by JD Vance, Putin, and Orban. They’re also the most likely to endorse the racial pronatalism we see among White nationalists.

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When I say “Christian nationalism,” I mean an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a very particular kind of Christianity. That “particular kind” of Christianity is not the kind in which penitent sinners ask Jesus into their hearts or believers seek to emulate Jesus’ compassion for the sick and poor. That particular kind is ethno-cultural. Historically this was Anglo Protestant but now encompasses White conservative Protestants and Catholics (like JD Vance). You can think of Christian nationalism as an ideology that 1) idealizes a mythology in which White Christianity laid the foundations of our national identity and prosperity, and 2) advances a vision of American civic life that institutionalizes the supremacy of White Christianity, and ultimately, White Christians. This ideology is older than the nation itself, but its intensity ebbs and flows throughout our history in response to various internal threats to the supremacy of White Christian culture and people.

Recent experimental evidence shows that fear of losing the battle for religious supremacy drives Christian nationalism for many Americans. Two recent teams of social scientists found that when they randomly told groups of Christians that their population was in decline and that they would become the numerical minority in the United States within the next few years, Christians in both studies responded with more Christian nationalism, and in one study, more Trump support. At its foundation, Christian nationalism represents a circling of the cultural wagons. It is most appealing to Americans who feel compelled to re-emphasize to themselves and others who made this nation great (us), who are its rightful rulers (us again), and who threaten its prosperity and security (them).

But the threats are not merely religious; they are ethno-cultural and political. As Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport observed back in the 1950s, “religion…usually stands for more than faith.” The sects of Christianity, he argued, “have become tied into subcultural and national groups so that religious divisions march hand in hand with ethnic and national divisions.” Christian dominion, in other words, is tied into ethno-cultural and political dominion, and threats to one are threats to the other.

Let me show you what I mean. In a 2022 survey fielded by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), roughly 6,000 Americans were asked how much they agreed with the statement, “Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” which is an excellent example of what we call “replacement theory.” PRRI also asked Americans a number of questions about Christian nationalism.

Figure 1 shows results from a statistical model that allows me to plot Americans’ agreement with the statement, “The US government should declare America a Christian nation,” by how much they agree with the replacement theory (controlling for other political, religious, and demographic characteristics). Clearly, the more Americans believe their cultural and ethnic heritage are being replaced by immigrants, the more likely they are to support Christian nationalism. This is likely for the same reasons the other experiments have shown, namely, those who believe the nation is being stolen must double-down to reassert the nation’s proper identity.

But how do Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalism seek to respond to their looming replacement by a more secular and ethnically diverse demographic?

One avenue has been expelling foreigners. Multiple studies have shown Christian nationalism to be powerfully related to support for restricting immigration, building border walls, and instituting Muslim bans.

Another avenue has been voter suppression, which attempts to neutralize the threat of minority or secular influence in politics by making it more difficult for people of color and young Americans to vote. And Christian nationalism is a strong predictor that such Americans support making voting more difficult, disenfranchising felons for life, and even mandating civics tests to vote.

But one tactic that was formerly thought of as a fringe approach was outbreeding the enemy. To be sure, among the most militantly evangelical Americans, pronatalism has long been a strategy for filling the world with soldiers for the cause of Christian dominion. The Duggars from the hit TV show 19 Kids and Counting were part of a broader patriarchal Christian movement dating back to the 1960s. But the appeal of group-centered pronatalism—having children not just because you find it personally fulfilling, but because it strategically benefits your religion (as well as your race, your political movement, your nation) is becoming a more common talking point among the Christian Right and some influential fellow-travelers. And as it turns out, Christian nationalism is the engine driving this childbearing motive for many.

In an earlier study of over 1,000 Americans, my co-authors and I demonstrated that Christian nationalism was among the strongest predictors that Americans broadly support national pronatalism. The more Americans agreed with Christian nationalist statements, the more likely they were to affirm statements like “Our declining fertility rate should alarm us as a nation,” and “Married couples in our country should have more babies, not fewer.” In fact, the only ideological factor we found more strongly associated with national pronatalism was a commitment to patriarchal gender roles. This makes perfect sense, because a nation organized around higher birth rates is a nation in which women will have more babies earlier, requiring them to limit their educational and career aspirations, and ultimately, their financial autonomy apart from men. Not surprisingly, research shows Christian nationalist ideology and patriarchal attitudes go hand in hand.

And there’s evidence to suggest Christian nationalism shapes Americans’ personal views about fertility, not just national fertility in the abstract. Using a representative sample of roughly 1,500 Americans from the 2021 General Social Survey, Figure 2 presents results from a statistical model in which I plot the number of children Americans think is ideal for a family to have by how much they subscribe to Christian nationalist views (like the country’s success is part of God’s plan, the government should advocate Christian values, and society would be better with more religious influence). Even after controlling for someone’s religious, political, and demographic characteristics, the more Americans subscribe to Christian nationalism, the greater their ideal number of children. At the extremes, those who completely reject Christian nationalism reported around 2.2 as their average ideal number of children, while those who strongly affirm Christian nationalism indicated nearly 2.7 on average—roughly half a child greater. (If that doesn’t sound like a lot, consider that fertility norms are often passed down from generation to generation, and thus, modest fertility differentials quickly lead to huge population differences due to exponential growth.)

But I wanted to go a step further than this and test how much Christian nationalism might undergird specific group-oriented reasons beyond the idea that more babies would be better than fewer. So, in a March 2023 survey, psychologist Joshua Grubbs and I asked nearly 1,500 Americans, “Which of the following are good reasons to have children?” The reasons included: 1) Because you want to help reverse our nation’s declining fertility; 2) Because you want to perpetuate your religious heritage; 2) Because you want to perpetuate your ethnic or racial heritage; and 4) Because you want to secure influence for those who share your political views. Respondents could answer from 1 = Very bad reason to 5 = Very good reason. What we found is that Christian nationalist ideology is the strongest factor predicting support for all four reasons to have kids.

In Figure 3, I’ve plotted the relative influences of several key ideological variables I tested in predicting these various reasons to have children. Christian nationalism is measured with six questions in which Americans were asked about their agreement with common Christian nationalist ideas: America has a special place in God’s plan, the government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation, the Bible should be the foundation of our legal system, the founding documents were divinely inspired, Christians have a responsibility to take dominion over national institutions, and being a Christian is an important aspect of being truly American.

As you can see, adhering to Christian nationalist ideology is a more important predictor of support for each reason to have more children than whether Americans already think having children is personally fulfilling, whether they are “social traditionalists” (they oppose abortion and same-sex marriage), whether they are personally religious, whether they are more ideologically conservative, and whether they are more partisan Republicans.

One important fact to keep in mind is that in none of these studies shows a difference by gender. Whether Americans are men or women, Christian nationalism corresponds to national pronatalism, higher personal fertility ideals, and supporting group-oriented reasons to have more children. It’s also important to remember that the questions we use to measure Christian nationalism say nothing about children or race. Yet, the more Americans affirm those abstract Christian nationalist views, the more they support the idea of perpetuating their own racial heritage through childbearing, in addition to having babies to perpetuate their religious heritage and secure political power for their group.

What’s the connection?

Ultimately, Christian nationalist ideology reflects an understanding that our nation has and should always belong to “Christians,” but what that really comes down to is “people like us.” And as I explained earlier, the “people like us” isn’t just about religion, but politics and ethno-culture. So, the more the nation is populated with “people like us” the better. That includes native-born Americans like us, Christians like us, members of our ethnic or racial group, and people who share our politics.

What this means is when GOP politicians speak the language of nationalist pronatalism—or any sort of group-based pronatalism, for one’s religion, race, or political party—they are speaking the language of the Christian Right. And this group-based pronatalist appeal dovetails perfectly with other emphases in the contemporary Republican platform that also strongly align with Christian nationalist priorities such as opposing abortion (more American babies) and restricting immigration (fewer foreign babies).

Is having more children a bad thing? Of course not. Neither is having large families. And there are, in fact, legitimate economic and political reasons to worry about declining birth rates given their impact on the social welfare system, workforce, and government budgets. Moreover, as sociologist Lyman Stone has pointed out, to the extent we see a growing discrepancy between how many children women want to have and how many they end up having, we should consider what policy changes might allow more women to reach their stated fertility goals (e.g., paid maternity and paternity leave, subsidies for childcare and other parenting needs, tax credits, etc.)

Yet the underlying ideology driving much of the modern pronatalist push on the right is not primarily the joy of having more children (see Figure 3 above). It’s babies as ammunition in a cultural, ethnic, and political war. It has been for years on the Christian Right, and those goals are now conveniently aligning with a growing concern about demographic winter among the wealthy and influential like Elon Musk and autocratic leaders around the globe. Politicians like JD Vance are dialed into both the replacement scare and pronatalist push on the right. And in lauding those we might call “fertility maxxers” as Americans worthy of more influence, Vance is making a strategic appeal to those who want to see more of “us,” and fewer of “them.”

 

Samuel L. Perry is the Sam K. Viersen Presidential Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. Along with dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, Dr. Perry is the author or co-author of five books including the award-winning Taking America Back for God (with Andrew Whitehead) and The Flag and the Cross (with Philip Gorski). His most recent book is Religion for Realists: Why We All Need the Scientific Study of Religion.