Citizen mothers and others: natalist discourse and politics in the U.S. after Trump

Abstract

This article focuses on the ways in which contemporary U.S. natalist discourse, signs, and political interventions have constructed mother citizens in binary opposition to outsider / others. It examines how a variety of players, from politicians to influencers, employ nationalistic pro- and anti-natalism toward the ends of population management in various cultural and political sites. It argues that by problematizing both fertility crisis and imagined internal and external threats to the state, U.S. natalists encourage prolific, white motherhood as duty to a national imagined community. Exploring historical examples of natalism and nationalism and following poststructuralists like Jacques Derrida, who traces out hierarchies and othering effects in sign systems and discourse, this article examines the imagined threats in contemporary U.S. natalism, which are depicted in binary to the selfless mother citizen.

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