To sceptics, pronatalism’s appeal in Silicon Valley may simply look like the latest messianic project for a community already convinced that they are the best people to colonise space, conquer death and fix the world’s problems. You do not need to fear dysgenic doom to feel that something is fundamentally broken about the way we have and raise children – as many recent or aspiring parents are already aware.
‘In almost every low-fertility country, no one is able to have the number of children they want to have. Even in South Korea, people still want to have two turkisk kvinnor children; they don’t want to have 0.8,’ says Kuang. But far from being an inevitable consequence of progress, she contends that it stems from specific choices we force on to families.
‘The first half of the gender revolution was women attaining educational attainment at parity with men, entering the workforce at parity with men,’ she continues. But the second half remains unfinished, leaving many women caught between mutually incompatible expectations at work versus at home – the classic ‘have it all’ problem. ‘Wow, you wonder why women aren’t rushing to sign up for that kind of life?’ laughs Kuang.
Lyman Stone, a natalist demographer and research fellow at the US’s Institute for Family Studies, has described the Collinses’ philosophy as ‘a very unusual subculture’ compared to millions of everyday natalists
Partly of the problem is that middle-class parents are now expected to micromanage their children’s upbringings more intensely than ever before. ‘It seems like in the past six- and seven-year-olds were just allowed to be feral… now it would basically be considered abuse to leave your child alone all day,’ says Babu.
Then there is the cost of housing. ‘How are you going to have two children, even if you desperately wanted to, if you can barely afford a one-bedroom apartment?’ asks Kuang, who would love to have three or four kids if only she could square the mortgage. Babu likewise says becoming a parent would be an easy choice if she knew she could still have a high-flying career and make enough money for a decent home. As it is, she’s torn.
Kuang concedes that no government has yet fixed these problems, but she does believe they are fixable. Although cash bonuses, lump sum payments and restricting abortion have all proven ineffective, she says, robust parental leave for all genders could make a difference. So could high-quality, affordable childcare that is available in adequate supply, and begins as soon as parents need to go back to work.
In South Korea, where the new president (a man) has declared that structural sexism is ‘a thing of the past’, a government pamphlet advised expecting mothers to prepare frozen meals for their husbands before giving birth and tie up their hair ‘so that you don’t look dishevelled’ in hospital
In the meantime, the Collinses hope to have at least four more babies, unless they are thwarted by complications from repeated C-sections. ‘When I look into the eyes of our children,’ says Simone, ‘and I see all the potential they have… and I think about a world in which they didn’t exist because we thought it was inconvenient? I’m like, I can’t. I can’t not try to have more kids.’
The Collinses did not coin the word ‘pronatalism’, which has long been used (along with ‘natalism’) to describe government policies aimed at increasing birth rates, or mainstream pro-birth positions such as that of the Catholic Church. Its opposite is ‘anti-natalism’, the idea that it is wrong to bring a new person into the world if they are unlikely to have a good life. Yet it is their version – a secular, paradoxically unorthodox reconstruction of arguably the most traditional view on earth, driven by alarm about a looming population catastrophe – that is prospering among the tech elite.
It was on the couple’s second date, sitting on a rooftop and gazing out at the nearby woods, that Malcolm first raised the prospect of children. Simone’s response was not enthusiastic.
But pronatalists argue that problems will manifest long before this, as working-age people begin to be outnumbered by older ones. The global economy is predicated on the assumption of continual growth in GDP, which is strongly linked to population growth. ‘If people assume that the economy is going to shrink in future, and shrink indefinitely, then it’s not just a recession – it’s like there’s no point investing in the future,’ says Babu, who defines her politics as economically liberal, feminist, and pro-immigration. ‘If that happens, your pension breaks down because your pension is gambled on the stock market. You withdraw your savings; the government can’t borrow. A lot of these structures just break down.’
The idea of using birth rates to influence future politics is one many will find alarming. It echoes the American ‘Quiverfull’ movement, which dictates that Christians should breed profusely so that over time society will be stuffed full of good believers.
Malcolm says he shares those concerns, which is why he is committed to being almost totally agnostic about which families works with. ‘If we act as anything other than a beacon, then we are applying our beliefs about the world to the people we recruit, which goes against our value set,’ he says.