The Atlantic - (archived: https://archive.ph/pa50F ) Musk’s High-Tech Polygamy Is a Dead End

The billionaire’s vision of family is bad for women and children.

By Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox
April 24, 2025, 7 AM ET

Elon Musk told a conference in Saudi Arabia last year that his listeners “should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem [we] need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter.” In this way, he spotlighted his commitment to the pronatalist cause—the idea that society must do more to prevent population decline due to falling fertility rates. He also underlined his personal commitment to the cause: “I mean, you know, you’ve got to walk the talk. So, I do have a lot of kids, and I encourage others to have lots of kids.”

Indeed. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Musk has had at least 14 children with four women—both the old-fashioned way and via IVF—and possibly many more. Musk’s brand of high-tech polygamy has its fans. After hearing about Musk’s child with Ashley St. Clair, the Republican former Representative Matt Gaetz posted on X: “This child has incredible genetics. Much love to this wonderful family.”

Musk’s approach to family formation represents a brave new world where polygamy and technology have united to create families far out of historic demographic norms. Because Elon is an outspoken pronatalist, and because reproductive technology keeps advancing, his family has taken on a larger-than-life status. The future of family life, and even civilization itself, could hinge on this approach becoming more common—or so the rhetoric seems to suggest. The right-wing commentator Richard Hanania has celebrated Musk as “the one billionaire acting in accordance with evolutionary ­theory.”

At a time when birth rates are declining across the world, techno-polygamy might sound like a good model for those who can afford it. But research on family structure has found that wealth and good genes aren’t everything. When children grow up in a single-parent home, they are more likely to undershoot their potential, even if Mom and Dad are both very rich. It might seem that children of the world’s richest man will do just fine, but no matter how much money you pour into raising your kids, no matter how many tutors you hire or compounds you build, evidence suggests children are more likely to struggle if one of their parents is absent than if their family is intact.

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