Elon Musk’s father suggests having babies should be more like breeding horses
The alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk framed the 2024 election and their bond has only deepened since.
Musk has been a regular fixture at the president-elect’s Florida mansion and the pair have introduced their families.
He has been privy to phone conversations with world leaders, consulted with Trump on his cabinet picks and even hosted him at Space X for the launch of the Starship rocket.
Musk will co-chair the new Department of Government Efficiency, charged with cutting government spending.
But how might the entrepreneur’s other views affect Trump policy?
Elon Musk secured the confidence of Donald Trump during his election campaign. Pic: Reuters
The cause closest to Musk’s heart is pronatalism, a pro-birth political and personal ideology in which reproduction is the key goal of humanity.
Musk regularly posts on social media with fears about population decline, sometimes bordering on obsession.
“Population collapse is coming… Earth is almost empty of humans,” he wrote recently.
“Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy we should teach fear of childlessness,” he added.
The frequency of these posts has increased in recent months.
Musk has at least 11 children, by three different women. Some of them have spent time with him in recent weeks at Donald Trump’s home.
Few understand the origin of Musk’s pro-birth views better than his own father, Errol Musk – an engineer and businessman from South Africa, who has a strained relationship with his son.
I speak to Errol on a video call from his home near Cape Town.
Errol Musk
“Elon doesn’t try to push his opinion across, but he will have an opinion,” he says.
Errol has seven children himself, ranging in age from Elon at 53 to his youngest daughter, who is five. He’s also a pronatalist.
“We’re not here to enjoy boating or flying or skiing or kite surfing, or something,” he says.
“We are here to continue being here. We should all be worried about declining populations, any country with any industry should be worried.”
Certain countries – like the United States, United Kingdom and Japan – do have ageing populations. But my conversation with Errol also reveals views which veer toward selective breeding.
I ask him about a comment Elon reportedly made to a biographer several years ago. Musk Jr apparently said: “If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, then that’s probably bad.”
I ask Errol Musk if that viewpoint is bordering on eugenics.
“I wouldn’t call it eugenics as such, but every nation has practiced a certain form of survival of the fittest.
“One need only go to England and go to the Cheltenham area, the horse breeding area, and say, ‘Look, we’re not going to breed the horses anymore by any form of standard. I’ve got a few old horses I’ve found in Nigeria and we’re going to just mix them with your race horses…’
“They’ll say, no, no, no, no, no,” he added.
Elon Musk and his children
A more sanitised version of pro-family politics took centre stage on the campaign trail.
At a rally, Donald Trump declared himself “the father of fertilisation” and vowed to make in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) free for anyone who needs it.
Sky News has been invited inside an IVF clinic in California, the world capital for fertility.
The fertility institute is in the Encino area of Los Angeles and allows patients to choose the eye colour of their baby as well as its gender.
Dr Jeffrey Steinberg was among the first fertility doctors to offer gender selection. He is taking future President Trump’s pledge to offer free IVF at face value.
“Donald Trump for better or for worse, tends to keep his word. And the sort of the pooh-poohing of what he was saying… I think it’s vanished because they’re realising that it’s probably going to happen. So all the fertility centres are gearing up for a huge surge.”
Elon Musk has donated millions of dollars to fertility research.
“Musk is a technocrat,” Dr Steinberg says. “He’s an intellectual genius in multiple areas. And everything he touches seems to turn to gold.
“There’s not much that evolves as quickly as Musk’s technology. But IVF has done that, and I think he’s going to find that very attractive.”
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Not all agree that encouraging people to have as many children as possible is the way forward when it comes to population decline.
“There’s some catastrophic thinking that goes on in the tech bro space of Silicon Valley and so on, and it’s usually not very practically oriented,” says Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at Maryland University.
“If you really tried to promote pronatalism, inevitably what you end up doing is promoting a retrograde sort of anti-feminism,” he says.
“So it ends up being how can we convince women to have more children, which ends up being how can we have women out of the workforce, at home more, married younger, all the things that are sort of rolling back the progress that we made with regard to women’s equality in the last 100 years. And so that’s my primary concern.
“The other is that it goes along with sort of a virulent nationalism that usually is not very far from racism and white supremacy.
“The idea of not just more births, but a certain kind of births, a certain kind of family. And it has not led to good outcomes in modern society when right-wing governments try to promote higher birth rates.”
While espousing his pronatalist views, Musk is navigating his own complicated family dynamic.
In the hills outside Austin, Texas, there are rumours he’s bought a multi-million-dollar compound to house some of his children and their mothers together, with his own property 10 minutes away.
Musk denies this is true.
But soon he could be helping to design family policy across the country.
Israel pounded the outskirts of Gaza City overnight, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government vowed to press on with a planned offensive on the city.
Families streamed out of the city as the explosions hit.
“I stopped counting the times I had to take my wife and three daughters and leave my home in Gaza City,” said Mohammad, 40.
“No place is safe, but I can’t take the risk. If they suddenly begin the invasion, they will use heavy fire.”
Mahmoud Abedrabo mourns over the body of his son Hamada in Gaza City on 24 August. Pic: Reuters
Others said they would prefer to die and not leave.
“We are not leaving, let them bomb us at home,” said Aya, 31, who has a family of eight, adding that they couldn’t afford to buy a tent or pay for the transportation.
“We are hungry, afraid and don’t have money,” she said.
Mourners pray next to the body of Palestinian boy Hamada Abedrabo on 24 August. Pic: Reuters
Witnesses said that overnight they heard nonstop explosions in Zeitoun and Shejaia.
Tanks shelled houses and roads in Sabra, and buildings were blown up in Jabalia.
On Sunday, the IDF said its forces had returned to combat in Jabalia to strengthen its control of the area and dismantle militant tunnels.
Smoke rises following an Israeli strike in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
It added that the operation there “enables the expansion of combat into additional areas and prevents Hamas terrorists from returning to operate in these areas.”
This month, Israel approved a plan to seize control of Gaza City. The offensive isn’t expected to start for another few weeks.
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In the meantime, mediators in Egypt and Qatar are trying to resume ceasefire talks between the two sides.
On Friday, Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said that Gaza City will be razed unless Hamas releases all its remaining hostages and ends the war on Israel’s terms.
Mourners transport the body of Ahmed Balata on 24 August. Pic: Reuters
Around half of Gaza’s two million residents currently live in the city and on Friday a global hunger monitor said that Gaza City and its surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine that will likely spread.
Israel said the monitor ignores steps Israel has taken since late July to increase aid supplies into and across Gaza.
Eight more people died of malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry on Saturday.
281 people, including 114 children, have now died of malnutrition and starvation since the war started, according to the ministry.
The war began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led gunmen killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel, mainly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
Since then, Israel has killed at least 62,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and internally displaced nearly its entire population.
Two married couples have died after a British car veered off the road and crashed in Germany, according to police.
The fatal accident happened shortly after midnight on Saturday in the trees near a highway in the Kassel district, north of Hesse in central Germany.
The 32-year-old male driver, a 31-year-old female passenger, a 32-year-old female passenger, and a 30-year-old female passenger all died at the scene, despite the efforts of German emergency services.
Sky News understands UK officials have not been contacted for assistance.
At roughly 12.30am on Saturday, the car appears to have veered off the road and crashed into nearby trees around 30m from the road, according to the Kassel police department.
Pic: Feuerwehr Reinhardshagen
One of the victim’s phones automatically alerted the emergency services to the incident, who sent an ambulance to the scene.
Soon, fire engines, ambulances, command vehicles and emergency support vehicles were all dispatched.
When emergency workers arrived, the car was lying on its side, wedged between several trees.
It wasn’t until they removed the roof that they found all four passengers.
Pic: Feuerwehr Reinhardshagen
The accident happened on Highway L3229
The emergency workers who dealt with the victims were immediately supported by the specialist mental health workers at the fire station in Reinhardshagen.
“This high number of deaths is an extraordinary operation for our Reinhardshagen Volunteer Fire Department,” said a fire department spokesperson.
“For some of the emergency personnel, it is the first time they have been confronted with death in this way.
“Therefore, a great deal is being done to help us process these images. We will also discuss this among ourselves and within families, because not everyone can easily shake off what they have seen.”
An investigation into the accident is ongoing and is being conducted by the Hofgeismar police station.
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