At first glance, the work reads as tender: a tiny sculpted baby in a knit cap, perched before a toy bear, surrounded by layered wallpapers patterned with florals and pastel motifs. Yet the title rips away sentimentality, demanding we confront the politics embedded in images of family and innocence.

As recent pronatalist movements gain traction—from “trad wife” culture to state-funded “baby bonuses”—the piece insists that such policies are not neutral incentives but tools of control. The framing here becomes allegorical: the baby encased within decorative domestic codes represents how nationalist ideology infiltrates the home, shaping identity through aesthetics of purity, protection, and conformity.

The sentimental imagery points toward the very myths pronatalism relies on—rewarding mothers, restricting reproductive freedom, and valorizing “good quality children” in service of a narrow, exclusionary vision of family. Behind the soft textures and toys lies a harder truth: these so-called “pro-baby” policies are inextricable from white nationalism, eugenics, and the ongoing attempt to regulate bodies and futures along lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality.