Elon Musk, the owner of tech giants like Tesla, SpaceX, and X, is egging Americans on to breed like rabbits and his drumbeat for people to have as many children as biologically possible should not be criticised as insincere looking at his own fathering track record.

Musk has engendered 11 children with three different women, including two with Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive. Must it be added that he had children with Zilis in a totally unconventional and non-physical way.

Zilis once explained that she and Musk never became intimate, and the twins were conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Musk expressed to her his desire for intelligent individuals to have children, which aligns with his concern about the declining birth rates.

While Musk expressed his anger at those who have made up their mind to not have kids, even proposing to deprive them of their voting rights, the data shows there are many other reasons people don’t want to have kids besides just general unwillingness.

According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey of non-parent American adults in the age bracket of 18 to 49, as many as 56% of respondents said they don’t have kids because “they just don’t want to” while 43% quoted “some other reason”.

Of the “some other reason” demographic, 29% cited age, 23% cited medical reasons and 14% cited financial reasons.

May be the tech billionaire is totally oblivious to the fact that the expense of raising a child to 18 years for an average American has gone through the roof, touching near $250,000 — the cost of college is not a part of it.

For Musk, who has a net worth of around $191 billion, raising even an army of children is child’s play.