Are You ‘Underbabied’?

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Photo: Shelby Tauber/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Are you one of the 30 percent of Americans who are, according to Dr. Oz, “underbabied”? Unfortunately, he does not mean “underbabied” in the sense that you’re being insufficiently pampered (you and I both, friend). During a White House event on Monday, Dr. Oz defined underbabied as having fewer children than you’d like or having no children at all. (The term didn’t catch on the first time Oz tried to make it happen in October 2025, so it’s unclear why he imagines it will take off now.) Since 2.1 children per woman is the generally accepted fertility rate required to maintain a stable population, I suppose having two or more kids could be termed “adequately babied.” I wonder what number of children would qualify a person as “overbabied.”

“We’re way below what we need just to replace the people that we have in America,” Dr. Oz said, going on to plug the Trump administration’s new website for discounted drugs including fertility medications. Oz predicted that, thanks to such efforts, there will be a wave of “Trump babies” in the near future. “You have to get moms healthy enough to do the most creative thing the universe knows,” he continued, “which is making babies.” Nowhere did Oz mention child-care costs or paid parental leave.

It is true that fertility rates in the United States have fallen below that 2.1 replacement level and are now at historic lows. However, this lacks some important context. A large part of the drop in fertility rates is due to the rapidly declining rate of teen pregnancies, which fell by 7 percent in 2025. Simultaneously, fertility rates among women in their 30s and 40s have been rising, and more women are having children in their late 40s than ever before.

Regardless, if Dr. Oz wants to get America sufficiently “babied,” I suspect it’s going to take a lot more than markdowns on Clomid to get us there.