The Baby Boomlet Among White House Couples

BY NATALIE ANDREWS AND ANTHONY DEBARROS

As U. S. birthrates decline, the Trump administration announces several pregnancies.

When Usha and JD Vance’s fourth child arrives this summer, the boy will join a family that keeps car seats installed in the vice presidential motorcade. He’ll fly in Air Force Two around the world and join Halloween trick-or-treating that the Vance family hosts at their three-story Naval Observatory home located on a 73-acre plot in northwest Washington.

Much about the Vances’ decision to have four kids is rare. Usha Vance is the first woman in 150 years to have a child while her husband is first in line for the presidency. Across America, just 7% of babies born in 2024 were the mother’s fourth, according to federal statistics.

Yet it’s not a rare choice inside the current White House. The wives of top White House deputies Stephen Miller and James Blair are also pregnant with their fourth children. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, is expecting her second child in May.

“There’s a little bit of competition on who’s kid is going to marry who.”

MEGHAN BAUER

A White House full of babies cuts a striking image in an era when one or two children is increasingly the norm.

The U.S. total fertility rate—an estimate of the number of babies a woman would give birth to during her lifetime—hit a record low in 2024, at just below 1.6 births per woman, according to federal statistics. In 2024, U.S. births outnumbered deaths by less than 600,000, a gap that continued fertility declines and an aging population would narrow or eventually reverse. Congressional Budget Office projections indicate that, without immigration—which the White House has pushed to reduce—the population would begin to shrink in 2030.

Across both parties, demographers, economists and government officials are sounding the alarm that the trend will lead to slower economic growth as well as fewer workers to pay into safety nets such as Social Security.

Pronatalists, such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, have seized on this data to urge more people to have children, and sought to invest their wealth and influence into the cause. To them, this is a White House walking the walk amid what they say is a culture that doesn’t give priority to growing families.

The vice president has joked that the Trump administration’s expanded support for young children was an impetus for the couple’s latest pregnancy. “When Usha and I were having the debate about the fourth kid, I said, ‘Honey, we’ve got the expanded child tax credit and we’ve got the Trump accounts, we’ve got to take advantage of this stuff,’” Vance said at the March For Life rally last month in Washington. Vance was referring to the $1,000 custodial individual retirement accounts for newborns and expanded the child tax credit in the tax bill Republicans passed last year. Leavitt said Trump’s policies have made him a notably pro-family president.

But to critics these policies are not enough to cover the everyday costs of having children for ordinary Americans. “Their reality is not the reality that I hear in what it looks like to raise a family, or start to raise a family,” said Rep. Emilia Sykes, an Ohio Democrat who is also focusing on improving the maternal mortality rate, of which the U.S. has the worst in any developed nation. “We have to get real, people aren’t even surviving.”

Among the benefits of a White House upbringing is that the second family’s children can travel in a private plane, as they did on Wednesday to the Winter Olympics in Milan, which Usha Vance has said makes their family goals of limited screen time easier. The vice president has managed his schedule to give priority to being present for dinner and bedtime.

With comforts come distinct drawbacks. Parents who previously raised children inside the confines of a presidential administration have struggled openly with the burden it placed on their kids. Michelle Obama recounted being moved to tears when she put her young daughters in the car with Secret Service agents to go to their first day at the elite Sidwell Friends School. “I saw them leaving and I thought, what on Earth am I doing to these babies?” she said during the United State of Women Summit in 2016.

It’s no easier for members of the Trump administration. When the Vances took their children to Disneyland last year, the vice president said a woman yelled, “You should disown your dad, you little s—.” The Millers moved to a military base after protests at their home, which were spurred in part by Stephen Miller’s hard-line deportation policies that critics say harm children.

The private trick-or-treating Halloween party the Vances hosted was especially enjoyed by high-profile White House staffers because some fear for their children’s safety should they go door-to-door in a district filled with Trump-hating residents.

The cohort of large families inside the White House has banded together to create more normalcy. Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller and a former Trump administration official herself who now hosts a podcast that frequently features top Republicans, said many couples who met in the first Trump term now have children. Weekends are now spent at birthday parties.

White House Director of Legislative Affairs James Braid’s wife last year went into labor with their second child while he was in an Oval Office meeting with the president and top advisers. “The people from outside the Oval passed me a note,” Braid said. The president sent him on his way expeditiously, with a note for his daughter.

Meghan Bauer, a mom of two boys who serves as assistant to the president on cabinet affairs, credits White House chief of staff Susie Wiles for creating a culture where children are welcome. At a staff retreat in Camp David last March, Wiles had an earlier dinner seating time for staff with children, and when those without children dined, the families roasted s’mores.

“There’s a little bit of competition on who’s kid is going to marry who,” Bauer said, laughing.

Bauer is on a text chain with other White House parents, including Leavitt, both of the Millers and Blairs; Hayley Harrison, the first lady’s chief of staff, and her husband Beau Harrison, deputy chief of staff for operations to the president; and Nick and Cassidy Luna, a deputy chief of staff for strategic implementation and Jared Kushner’s chief of staff, respectively.

The text chain helps them navigate the hurdles of breaking news and political dynamics, which come at all times of day, including bedtime and bath time routines. It’s also where they swap parenting recommendations for finding an OBGYN or a boutique to buy outfits for the White House Easter Egg Roll, Bauer said.

Leavitt’s toddler son occasionally visits the White House and listens to “Wheels on the Bus” in her office while she talks to reporters. President Trump—who has five children from three marriages—is known to love having his young grandchildren stop by. The Vance family has prioritized being together as much as possible since the inauguration when Usha Vance held then-2-yearold Mirabel on her hip with one hand and a Bible for her husband in the other.

The Millers have taken their children on Air Force One when Stephen Miller travels with the president. Katie Miller said she does have help in watching her children through nannies, and she’s very particular about who watches them.

“I’m not a go-with-the-flow mom, I do not pretend to be,” she said. “Our lives are very structured and scheduled.” One exception was a spontaneous visit to the White House so her daughter could show her father a lost tooth, a visit that included a stop by the Oval Office. On most nights, the Millers embrace Trump’s Make America Healthy Again mantra and avoid processed sugar—dessert is strawberries, blueberries or cheese and olives, Katie Miller said.

Usha Vance had said she was the driver for having the couple’s third child, and last year on Meghan Mc-Cain’s podcast said it was the vice president who pushed for a fourth.

Katie Miller sees an even bigger brood in the cards for her family.

“I would have five, six, seven and eight,” she said. “I think Stephen might cut me off at some point.”