As President-elect Donald Trump has quickly begun to assemble his new administration, some have noted that many of his closest advisors are parents with larger children than the national average.
The current national average for a family in the United States is 1.94, which is less than the 2.1 needed to replenish the population. Meanwhile, some of Trump’s Cabinet members and aides are much above the replacement level.
Trump is a father to five grown children. Despite being divorced twice, Donald is believed to be a dedicated grandfather to his ten grandkids, even spending the morning after election night golfing with his granddaughter, Kai Trump.
Doug Burgum, the nominee for Secretary of the Interior, and Stephen Miller, the Deputy Chief of Policy, have three children each. Trump’s choices for the CIA, John Ratcliffe, and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, both have four children. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominee for Health and Human Services, and Pete Hegseth, contender for Secretary of Defense, both had seven children from previous marriages.
Sean Duffy, Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, has nine children with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy. Duffy resigned as a Wisconsin congressman in 2019 before the birth of his ninth child in order to spend more time with his family.
“Raising a family is hard work,” he wrote on social media to justify his decision. “I have always been open to signs from God when it comes to balancing my desire to serve both my family and my country.”
Doug Burgum, the nominee for Secretary of the Interior, and Stephen Miller, the Deputy Chief of Policy, have three children each. Trump’s choices for the CIA, John Ratcliffe, and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, both have four children. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominee for Health and Human Services, and Pete Hegseth, contender for Secretary of Defense, both had seven children from previous marriages.
Sean Duffy, Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, has nine children with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy. Duffy resigned as a Wisconsin congressman in 2019 before the birth of his ninth child in order to spend more time with his family.
“Raising a family is hard work,” he wrote on social media to justify his decision. “I have always been open to signs from God when it comes to balancing my desire to serve both my family and my country.”
He was constantly targeted by the Kamala Harris campaign and the media for his 2021 criticism of the country’s leadership, which he dubbed “childless cat ladies.” However, the underlying issue of low birth rates in the United States is causing growing concern among those paying attention.
Catherine Pakaluk, a social researcher and author, told Fox News Digital that the country’s low birth rate has reached a stage where it poses serious challenges and risks for the future.
“We Americans are not having enough children to replace the population,” she was saying. “What we’re seeing is an inversion of the normal population pyramid where we would think about the normal population pyramid would be a greater number of younger workers supporting a smaller number of older, retired workers.”
Though not yet at the level of countries such as Japan and China, which are experiencing population declines, Pakaluk stated that the result is that there are “fewer and fewer workers,” fewer people paying into the tax base, and government programs such as social security and Medicare are becoming increasingly unsustainable.
Because of this reality, Pakaluk says she appreciates people like Vance who advocate for larger families.
“I appreciate Vice President-elect Vance’s emphasis on family values and his desire for a larger family. I believe that having role models discussing how having children isn’t all that horrible and, in fact, may be better than you thought is extremely beneficial to us today.
Pakaluk’s most important goal, however, is to promote ideals that encourage individuals to have larger children. She just wrote a book called “Hannah’s Children” in which she conducted extensive interviews with mothers who choose to have five or more children. These women, who hailed from various religion backgrounds, shared a strong religious conviction in children as God’s blessings.
This led Pakaluk to feel that the remedy to what she refers to as the “birth dearth” is a restoration to individual and community religious beliefs.
She used Duffy, who is a practicing Catholic, as an example.
“I believe that being pro-child does not necessarily result in more children. But I believe you can have more children if you are pro-church or pro-religious community,” she explained. “If people encounter strong religious communities on a more regular basis, this can change in a generation.”