A Conservative Role Model for Ending the Fertility Crisis

Emma Waters stands on the front porch of her house in a tattered former steel mill town outside Pittsburgh. She is pregnant with her third child, and balancing Cordelia, who is a year and a half, on her hip, while hoisting an American flag into its holder, a daily routine.

In the kitchen, her husband, Jackson, is frying up scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast. Their older toddler, Betsy, 3, slumps on the living room sofa, not feeling well. When they sit at the table, Jackson says grace. Cordelia, sitting in her high chair, happily mashes eggs. Betsy throws up.

It’s a little chaotic, but it is the kind of life — early motherhood and what she describes as “pro-family” values — that Mrs. Waters is urging American women to return to.