Pronatalism: What Silicon Valley’s latest fad is and why it raises troubling questions

For Malcolm and Simone Collins, declining birth rates across many developed countries are an existential threat. The solution is to have “tons of kids,” and to use a hyperrational, data-driven approach to guide everything from genetic selection to baby names and day-to-day parenting.

They don’t heat their Pennsylvania home in winter, because heating is a “pointless indulgence”. Their children wear iPads around their necks. And a Guardian journalist witnessed Malcolm strike their two-year-old across the face for misbehaviour, a parenting style they apparently developed based on watching “tigers in the wild”.

The Collinses are leading spokespeople for a movement called pronatalism, popular in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk, a father of 11, is one of its leading proponents. “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” Musk tweeted.

Demographers disagree: there is no collapse, and one is not even predicted. Such evidence has not stopped the rise of pronatalism in response to an imagined “population bomb”.

Pronatalism has strong links to effective altruism, a movement tied to Silicon Valley and elite schools, which uses “evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit as many people as possible” , and longtermism, which insists our long-term future is the key moral priority.

What is pronatalism

A general definition of pronatalism is...

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