Elon Musk is a father to nine children.
Billionaire Elon Musk has been advocating for people to have multiple children to tackle an "underpopulation crisis". However, Mr Musk's recent statement on childless people and their voting rights has sparked a debate on Twitter.
The Tesla boss, while responding to a user on Twitter, endorsed the idea of taking away voting rights from people without children. A series of tweets from Twitter user Datahazard claimed that "democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents." Mr Musk responded to the same and said "Yup" in agreement. The richest man in the world had previously written on the social media platform, "The childless have little stake in the future."
Last year, the Twitter boss, who is a father to nine children, wrote on the site, "A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."
Speaking at the All-In Summit via video in 2022, he said, "Some people think that having fewer kids is better for the environment. It's total nonsense. The environment is going to be fine even if we doubled the size of the humans."
Mr Musk further went on to say, "At least maintain our numbers. We don't necessarily need to grow dramatically, but least let's not gradually dwindle away until civilization ends with all of us in adult diapers, in a whimper." Further, the Tesla CEO used Japan's dwindling birth rate as an example. "Japan is a leading indicator here," he said, adding Japan's population declined by 600,000 people in 2021. Mr Musk also claimed that the country could "cease to exist" because its birth rate was declining.
He added that the world cannot have civilisation dwindle into nothing. He then also made his position very clear, saying that having kids is not bad for the environment. It is "essential for maintaining civilisation," Mr Musk stated.
The SpaceX founder went on to recount the fears some modern-day parents have and how it doesn't add up. "I've heard many times; 'How can I bring a child into this terrible world'," Mr Musk said. "I'm like 'have you read history?' Because let me tell you, it was way worse back then," he added.
Elon Musk shares 4-year-old son AE A-12 and daughter Exa Dark Siderael Musk, later name changed to Y with Grimes. The pair have been co-parenting their children after splitting up in September last year. In addition, he secretly had twins in November 2021 with Shivon Zilis, the project director at his Neuralink company. He shares with his first wife, Justine Wilson, 18-year-old twins Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin, as well as triplets Kai, Damian and Sax, who were born in 2006.