Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Award Date

2026

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department / School

Communication and Journalism

First Advisor

Andrea Carlile

Abstract

The United States experienced one of the lowest birth rates in decades in 2024 and has been blamed by policymakers for poor economic and societal outcomes. To combat this, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to encourage healthcare insurances to lower the cost of fertility treatments. Policies encouraging more births align with pronatalist ideologies, the belief that higher national birth rates are better for society. Furthermore, Vice President JD Vance and social media influencers, Malcolm and Simone Collins, have built a strong resurgence of pronatalist ideologies through public addresses and interviews long before Trump’s executive order. For an in-depth analysis, I adopted feminist criticism, political discourse theory, and social movement criticism as rhetorical lenses. This study revealed that this new wave of pronatalism as both a political and social movement reinforces power structures and may redefine how the public perceives American identity. This analysis also outlined several implications from these rhetoricians as radical motivators. Pronatalism is beneficial in exploring a new area of political discourse and social movements.

Publisher

South Dakota State University

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Rights Statement

In Copyright