Taking childbirth to an extreme

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Babies. Americans are having fewer of them than ever before. But there’s a movement to try to turn that around.

REICHARD: It’s called “pronatalism.” People having lots of children and encouraging others to go and do likewise. But there are ethical questions.

WORLD senior writer Emma Freire drove to Pennsylvania to meet the Collins family and find out what it means to be a pronatalist parent.

EMMA FREIRE: Malcolm and Simone Collins already have four children. But they are hoping for more. A lot more.

SIMONE: Minimum, seven, maximum, as much as fate allows. Really, I'm like, we will keep having kids until I can physically no longer have kids.

MALCOLM: As providence allows, yeah.

SIMONE: So basically, if we have six kids, and I lose my uterus. I have a hysterectomy after something goes terribly wrong during a C section, because I can only have C sections now, then we may consider getting a surrogate to have a kid, for example, which I really don’t want to do.

During our interview, we sit around the kitchen table of their 1790’s farmhouse. The children play upstairs, but there are plenty of interruptions.

SIMONE: Our entire - I do like your turtle, Good job buddy! – our entire governmental system…

Malcolm and Simone are “pronatalists.”

MALCOLM: Pronatalism is a movement that is attempting to draw attention to the rapid decline in fertility rates across the world, not just the developed world, and the long term social, economic and political consequences of this. I think that the biggest misconception about pronatalism is: pronatalism is not a movement that is trying to stop population collapse, specifically, that is impossible now. If we are on the Titanic, we are going to hit the iceberg every time.

They are still having as many kids as they can and they encourage others to do the same. The hope is to mitigate the worst impact. Malcolm had his ‘aha’ moment about the impending demographic disaster when he was working as a venture capitalist in South Korea.

MALCOLM: One of the partners at my firm, they were like, Why don't you sort of plot out where you think the Korean economy is going to be in 50, 100 years? And so I ran the numbers.

Based on the trends, he concluded there won’t be a South Korean economy in 50 to 100 years. He thinks America is only about 20 years behind South Korea.

SIMONE: Our entire governmental system, our city infrastructure, our taxes, our social services, even our economy. These things are all predicated on this expectation of population growth, and it's fine for us to figure out how to do with leveling off population or even a smaller one, but right now, none of our systems are prepared for that.

Malcolm and Simone spread their message via their podcast, several books they co-authored, a conference, and a foundation. They’ve gotten a lot of attention but also a lot of backlash. People have called child protective services on them and they’ve received death threats. But their movement has the backing of Elon Musk, who’s the father of at least 12 children.

MALCOLM: Pretty much every right leaning person in Silicon Valley would identify as a pronatalist. And pretty much the entire new right is pronatalist. It's a group of people who typically have moved from atheist stances to more religious stances. They're a group of people who typically worked in venture capital, worked in Silicon Valley. We have overlapping ideologies. And the new right is really becoming, I think it's going to be a very powerful force in American politics moving forwards.

Malcolm and Simone used to be atheists but now say they believe in some parts of the Bible. They are building a community with other pronatalist families. Within that community, they want to revive the traditional practice of “sending out” their kids—meaning, extended stays with other families.

MALCOLM: It teaches them about a different way of life, a different set of rules. This was done by the early Puritans in America. The early Puritans actually did it during kids' teenage years, because kids would act out less when they were sent out.

Malcolm and Simone hope to one day use this community to facilitate arranged marriages.

MALCOLM: When we talk about arranged marriage with Gen Alpha, they're like, sign me up. I think that we may miss what a literal hellscape the dating market is for Gen Alpha. So it's not an arranged marriage where we're going to set them up with someone and they're not going to have a choice at all. It's an arranged marriage where we will help you find a partner.

But there’s a lot about the Collins’s beliefs that most Christians cannot support. All of their children were conceived via IVF because they can’t conceive naturally. And they strongly support others using artificial reproductive technology and not only for a married mother and father. They also see it as a way for LGBTQ individuals to have children.

They have around 40 frozen embryos - all of which they hope to implant.

MALCOLM: As you get older, you're losing about maybe two per attempt, three per attempt.

While they continue to build the pronatalist movement, Malcolm and Simone are enjoying their time with their children.

MALCOLM: I don't know how I'm gonna handle the day we stop being able to have toddlers in the house, like this idea that it would be the last time I'm interacting with one of our kids.

SIMONE: Well, the plan is, by the time that happens, then we get our first grandchild.

MALCOLM: Well, that’s the hope if nothing goes wrong. But this is why we pay attention to stuff like making sure we can do the implantations.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

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