Simone and Malcolm Collins are enthusiastic avatars for a new pronatalist movement. With Trump 2.0, they’re more optimistic than ever…
It’s a new year, which, for Simone Collins, means a new pregnancy…
— from an article by Anne Branigin in The Washington Post, February 1, 2025.
The Guardian published a lengthy profile of Simone and Malcolm Collins in 2024, referring to them as America’s “premier pronatalists.” Business Insider profiled them in late 2022. They appeared in a 2023 article in The Telegraph, which counted them among the “elite couples breeding to save mankind.”
I read about them last weekend. Prior to that, I had never heard of the word “pronatalist”, even though there’s apparently a whole ‘elitist movement’ that has embraced the philosophy. But I live in Pagosa Springs. We miss hearing about most everything. Especially if it’s elitist.
Apparently, the pronatalist movement gathers annually for NatalCon, the Natal Conference, to be held this year in Austin, Texas, March 28-29. Reportedly, many in the movement hail from the tech industry. A conference ticket costs $1,000.
Obviously, I will not be attending.
But their website was free to visit.
By the end of this century, nearly every country on earth will have a shrinking population, and economic systems dependent on reliable growth will collapse. Thousands of unique cultures and populations will be snuffed out.
Governments have tried everything in the standard technocratic toolset – tax incentives, subsidized childcare, propaganda – and nothing has worked.
I wish I had known about that standard technocratic toolset when Darlene and I were having our kids.
Of course, we weren’t an elitist couple, and we weren’t breeding to save human civilization. We were just having a bit of fun in bed.
I wonder if the pronatalists are having fun, or if they are taking this whole thing too seriously?
Elon Musk seems like a serious kind of guy. He has 12 children with three different partners… six with ex-wife Justine Wilson, three with musician Grimes, and three with tech executive Shivon Zilis.
It’s actually frightening to think that 12 children have Elon Musk’s genes. I mean, talk about the end of civilization.
Back in 1965, Hal David and Burt Bacharach wrote a song that Burt didn’t think was very good. The title was, “What the World Needs Now is Love”. They had offered it to popular singer Gene Pitney, but Pitney rejected it. Hal David wanted Jackie DeShannon to sing it, and Burt was initially reluctant to play it for her. Jackie did end up recording it, and it peaked at Number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Never ask a songwriter whether their song is any good. They actually don’t know.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…
If a pronatalist had written the song lyrics, it would go like this:
What the world needs now is babies, sweet babies
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…
It gets the point across, but “babies” doesn’t rhyme with “of”. The original lyric works better.
Plus, “babies, sweet babies” has too many syllables. The singer would have to rush the phrase, and it would never make the Billboard Hot 100.
Luckily, we can argue that more “love, sweet love” — if we are referring to heterosexual love — would result in more babies. If we had more of it.
I guess we had too little of it, even back in 1965.
Maybe it would be a good thing if all the people in the tech industry had more children. The children could then grow up to be tech workers, and they could then become billionaires who fire federal workers. Maybe America could finally become a place where everyone is a billionaire.
From journalist Anne Branigin’s article about Simone and Malcolm Collins:
In the pronatalist movement and the New Right, the Collinses have found the big tent they’ve been looking for and the world they want to build. (The best-case scenario, Malcolm says, earnestly, is “a benevolent galactic empire.”)
“I have kids for the future of human civilization,” Malcolm said on the way back from the fertility clinic. “Because I have pride in who I am and who my ancestors were and what I think my descendants will achieve.”
The average fertility rate in the United States has not been above the 2.1 replacement rate since 2007, according to World Bank data. The World Bank is one of those elitist organizations dependent on reliable growth, at risk of collapsing if we don’t have more babies. If I were them, I would be worried.
I’m not them, thank heavens… but I’m worried anyway.
About those 12 little Elon Musks running around.