WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Flyover Features: Pronatalism or Something Sinister?

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Emma and Sophia discuss an article where an eccentric couple is obsessed with pronatalism, a burgeoning movement encouraging mass population growth.

You're listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant, speaking with my co-host, Emma Verini. Hi. In this episode, we're going to be discussing an article published in World called Baby Fever. This article is quite possibly one of the strangest articles I've read and that we've done for this show. this article is about a pronatalist movement, but not just any pro natalist movement like you would find in Hungary under Victor Oban or something like that. This is really strange. So I think that this article requires a decent amount of background as to the pro natalist movement, some of the people in tech who were involved in it, and just the background on the people that this article covers.

So let's just get into that. First of all, this article was a posted on January 16th, 2025, and issued on February 1st of the same year. So it is by Mary Jackson and Emma Frere. And the subhead of this article is amid plunging birth rates, a growing pronatalist movement insists families need to have more kids. This article specifically talks about a couple named Malcolm and Simone Collins. And I don't think that article goes into a lot of depth as to who these people are, where they come from. Granted, it does talk about it a little bit. But there's a lot more to it. So let's just sort of describe the background and then we'll jump into what the article actually says.

Most of this background is coming from Wikipedia, by the way. So let's get into that. First of all, this couple, I believe met online and the husband's, been proposed over Reddit.com, the social media site. The most romantic social media site of all time where people on forums are really social and they definitely don't have the reputation of being people that never go outside. You know, it's such a romantic place to propose. How do you even propose on Reddit? You just be like, send a DM maybe.

Send a DM. Hey, will you marry me? How terminate online do you have to be to like never even meet them in person or just Like on Reddit. I mean, I don't, maybe they did meet in person. All it says here is that he proposed on Reddit, which is strange and might give you a little bit of background as to what exactly is at play here. Yeah.

On another note, Simone Collins ran for Republican office in PA for the House of Representatives but lost. So somewhat have a name in politics, which is also important. Also, want to mention that these people are not like many. pronatalist movements and that they're actually atheists. And of course, a lot of pro-natalist movements were atheistic, especially like, you know, during World War II and stuff. But I think the contrast to this could be like Hungary where a lot of people are Christian and, you know, have that as a reason for wanting to have children. But they actually believe that this book, which is called

the martyrdom of man was divinely inspired. And I think most people would say that their religious text is divinely inspired. This is, this is, you know, this is an actual religious belief. They believe that a book that came out in 1872, a work of philosophy by Winwood Reed is divinely inspired, inspired by God. So God spoke into this book that was published in 1870. too. And they have connections to techily, including Elon Musk, although, you know, I don't know how how well Elon Musk knows these people, but apparently have some ties with like Silicon Valley people,

although I don't know how deep those are. Yeah, well, I mean, what's interesting is that she ran as a Republican candidate. And according to Wikipedia, she lost, but by like 17% or something. So, I mean, she actually got some support, but also how many people are just like, Republican fill out box and don't realize, oh, what she says is actually kind of insane. Yes. A lot of people just vote like down ballot Republican, which I think is another thing. Like if you're running for the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania, like that's not the actual House of Representatives. So I mean, it's probably a lot easier to get on the ballot and, yeah, have people vote for you, even if they don't really know what they're voting for. I will say, I talked about this with a group of people, though, and I'm going to be honest, like, they're kind of like, you know, well, we're below the rate of replacement right now in the U.S.

And I'm like, that's true. But I don't know if it feels creepy the way of being pronatalists that they have, that they talk about. Just this obsession with only having kids, I don't know, and just making it into this kind of like existential crisis thing. Yeah. It's really weird to me. Well, they're proposed like methods of having children. I mean, regardless of what you think about IVF, the fact that, you know, they support that and sort of this mechanistic view of having children,

wherein, you know, it's a duty. And you're sort of living out of obligation to, like, society in the world at large for having kids. I think that strips having children of a lot of the, a lot of the, like, joy that most fathers and mothers have when they bring a kid into the world. I think that could have very disastrous consequences for the children that are born into this sort of movement. Well, it's like you think, look at Elon Musk. The man's had something like 12 kids with three different women. It's left all of them.

I mean, life is precious. I don't think it's bad that those kids came, that of those kids exist. But it's a little disturbing the way they came into existence and how you know he's not spending a ton of time with them. And how he'll, like, blame a kid for being trans because they did something terrible. And it's like, well, where were you when they were struggling? You know, they're just away at a private school. You know, it's just a lot of these people that are really aggressively claiming the pro natalist label don't seem to be encouraging a healthy outlook entirely.

Yeah, that's the thing. I think the other thing is that people are going to group these folks in with just standard Christians. For example, Catholics. I mean, I'm not Catholic, but a lot of Catholic people just happen to have a lot of kids. and their relationships are not like this at all. Yeah. They are not, they don't believe in IVF. They, they aren't trying to, they aren't trying to, like, reproduce for just for the sake of fixing,

uh, the demographics of the world and declining birth rates. Like, they believe that they have a, like, divinely sanctioned duty to do that. that it's actually a good thing instead of just, you know, having, having kids. The article even says their pronatalism is not rooted in religion or marriage, but in saving the species. On their website, they state they're vehemently against authoritarian population control policies and oppose those who use pronatalism as an instrument to other ideological or religious ends. So it's basically like their religion is, or like way of life, is literally just expanding the human population. And they want anyone to have kids who can have them.

But what's weird is they say that, but then they also support, like, technological, modern institutional forms of population growth, which I guess makes sense, but it seems backwards, too, for me. And they rely on IVF to have children, and they have something like 40 frozen embryos. And they have even undergone scum. screening for these embryos to give risk scores to show them the odds of how likely they love. It's schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, forms of cancer, even trivial stuff like gum disease. And what's really disturbing said, they also say we have received scores on things like height, IQ, things that are associated with performance and educational attainment. This is some very eugenic-coded stuff.

Well, that is true. Although I will say, I think we just live in a society that by, in large encourages people who are less intelligent and have like fewer good qualities to have more kids just based on I don't know the way the welfare system is set up like I definitely do think that we are too far the other way but yeah I also don't think that selecting the the best embryo to to birth is is also a very good solution to that it's just Just like putting too much faith in the hands of like science and genetic engineering and not enough faith in maybe just like reversing some of the terrible policies that we have that encourage people who are bringing children into this world who they can't support or something like that. Yeah.

It just feels evil to me to also assess one's worthiness of life based on. on educational attainment, which is in itself, just like, I don't know, form of social control. I don't know. It just feels very dark that it's like, oh, we're so want to have kids, but we support all these modern systems that have led to this problem in the first place, you know? That's also true. It's very weird. I think a lot of people would have a very visceral reaction to this sort of thing.

It is, it's just, it's just weird. It's like this, this is these people's religion, you know? Yeah, no, that's what's weird about it. This literally is their religion, like their religion just being, is just having lots of kids. And there's even this quote where they say, like, there's this misconception of pronatalism, that it's some weird project trying to get some, trying to get people to do some extreme thing. And it's like, I mean, going through IVF and creating like 40 embryos and then just like, selectively choosing them.

Okay, that's a little, that's a little strange. And the other thing is a lot of people who use IVF, whether you support it or not, are not doing this. They are having trouble conceiving. Like, they're not just trying to genetically engineer their kid. They're having reproductive issues. And granted, this woman did as well have reproductive issues. But I think that her way of approaching having children is very different from other people who are trying to use something like IVF. Yeah, they're also very active on social media, which is interesting.

And apparently they have a podcast called Baste Camp that has around 400,000 views per month. And in March they'll headline the second natal conference. And of course it would be here, Austin, Texas. And they have expensive ticket prices, which apparently did a good job of selecting a high bar of a person. And everyone there was a tech entrepreneur. of some sort or in media or in government, which is freaky. Because this means they're relatively, I still have hope and think this is like, you know, some people are going to follow this, but this is hopefully going to be a somewhat niche,

strange group of people. But it's a little freaky that there's relatively high profile people that actually want this. I was hoping this would be a little bit more fringe than I'm finding out that it is. But yeah, it's definitely weird. And here's the other thing that they don't even address. They want people to have kids and they want people to have more kids. kids, but it's such a, I feel like it's a band-aid solution to a huge problem. It's like, this is like putting a band-aid on a huge wound. It's not going to, it's not going to fix things.

Like, what we need to figure out is, why don't people want to have kids? Why don't women want to have kids? Yeah. There are a bunch of women who don't want to have kids anymore. That's, that's sort of unheard of. Like, I think that biologically women should want to have kids, but so many of them are saying, no, why don't, why? Well, hot take. I mean, because we probably live in a world that I mean it's hard to find a good man who maybe would want be good to be a father with or just like we're just living I mean we're just living in a social world that discourages that kind of life I think

right I mean I think that women will want to have kids when men demonstrate that they are able to be good fathers and I think that's something that women aren't seeing and I think That's why birth rates are dropping so much. Yeah, it's like I think a lot of feminism was a reaction to weak or... Week masculinity. Yes, and by weak masculinity, I mean, you know, men being cruel, men not having this kind of strong moral, morality or guidance that would make one want to be, you know, one want to be married, you know?

Like, I can understand if you're getting treated like dirt and just like in open door, like, you're not going to want to. you're going to feel alienated from having kids, you know. And then it's this other dual thing of like, well, how can I find success just with being a stay-to-home mom? But also, I want this outer world that's open to me of working. And it's just an impossible situation almost. Yeah. And I mean, the other thing is a lot of people are just straight up infertile. I don't have the statistic off the top of my head.

But I think in the next decade or so, what is it going to be like an eighth of people? are just not fertile. And I mean, maybe some of that is reversible, but you have to look at why so many people are infertile. There are women who are infertile, a lot of men who are infertile, a lot of men in their 20s and 30s who are getting erectile dysfunction. Why is that happening? Yeah. Why is that happening? Yeah. Why am I getting, why can't men, why is that, yeah. It's completely unheard of. It's, it's, that, that, that does not happen. Yeah. And I, I think that, that another huge factor that's at play and that causes that is like severe dopamine addiction. Yeah. It's like I'm not trying to pin all the blame on men here. I'm really not because I also think

that women, I think everybody's at fault. Everyone's at fault, yes. But I mean, when you look at fertility, when you look at these declining fertility rates, I do think that personal life decisions have huge role to play in that. And this article doesn't even address that. Like, if you want to solve these problems, you're going to have to address head on. Why are so many men impotent? Why do so many women not want to get married, not have the desire to get married to any men? I think that's a huge issue. And just telling people, breed is not going to fix the problem. It's not going to fix the problem. It's a weird, creepy, hypersexualized solution to a problem that is spiritual. Yeah, well, it's interesting because The sociologist Seyright Mills, he, in thinking of his sociological imagination, had the idea that private troubles are problems of larger social issues.

And I think this is something that a lot of the times applies. Like if just there's this general increase of distance or disconnect in the, you know, nuclear family from then that might lead to or be a part of or consequence of larger social issues. Like just this in general world that doesn't seem to value things would ought to be valued. It's just working for the market or the system. There's just not this transcendent ideal to be found. Right. Well, having kids makes the green line go up. It really, it'll really improve the economy, you know?

I mean, it'll really fix birth rates. And it makes the statistics look really epic if you have more kids. So that's why you should have kids. How is that a motivator for anybody to have kids? Yeah. Or just, well, that's what they literally say in the article. They literally say, oh, we just need kids that'll be like good on the socionomic ladder and aren't

going to be like schizophrenic. That's as deep as it goes for them. And I mean, what I don't like is it is a problem that we're lower than the replacement rate. But if just women don't want to have kids, like the problem, you can't just solve it by just being like, have kids. There's something beyond that that's causing the issues here. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, telling women, oh, by the way, this might be super abstract and everything, but, like, birth rates are declining and the economy is bad. So we need you to, like, carry a child for nine months and then, like, birth it. And it's going to take a huge tax on your body, but it'll make the green line go up a little bit if enough women do it. It's like, who is that motivating? Except someone who is, like, severely, like, terminally. online. Who is going to be convinced by that? Yeah. And if they are, it's just a woman who's just

depressed and hopeless and feels her only hope can be found and having a child. It's like motherhood. You know, I know a lot of mothers say it's the best thing that ever happened to them and it's a great thing. But I think what I find disgusting about this is they are commodifying it and making it into this like just you're evil if you don't do it instead of viewing it as something of like spiritual beauty, but also not hating those who may not immediately choose to have kids. You know, it's just, there's just disgust, and it's like a twisting of something that I think is supposed to be good, children and the having of children, and to them just being mere material ends or this just thing we must have because of an existential threat.

And I do think that there's a lot of other factors behind it, like the divide between men and women in terms of like political views. Women are way more liberal nowadays than men are. Like, and it was the women who drifted off track and just went way far left, whereas men sort of, there was a right word trend among men, but women just went sort of crazy in the past 10 years and just went super far left. I do think that also has something to do with it. But as I said before, and I think you said this too, I think it's more so a reaction to men than anything else. Yeah, I do want to look into this more because that's very interesting, just why are, how did we get here? Because it's just, even if we live in a culture that doesn't seem to support life beyond just a vague economic end, just vague, like, capitalist or whatever, market end, like, it just seems like this is not the response we should have, you know?

it's still freaky to have this eugenic force thing. And their religious beliefs are really weird too, because as they say, like, in the end, they've moved from atheism to wanting to incorporate religion into their family. Now they say they are a form of Christian. The article doesn't get into it, but they're like, the beliefs about God, Jesus, and church are far from biblically orthodox. So they're heretical Christians. Yeah, they want their kids to be raised, like, with some religion, but they're heretical about it. Because the actual Christian teachings, contrary to some Reddit atheist popular belief, don't teach women to solely be breeders.

So you have to include some weird stuff there if you're at this level of just pronatalism. Well, yeah, the other thing is they're the types of people I would assume who believe that religion is socially expedient, but don't actually have any faith in it. They just think that it's beneficial to society. So it's like, oh, well, we need to raise our kids to be, you know, Christian or, you know, Christians who. think that the martyrdom of man is also divinely inspired, which newsflash, it's not. Well, that's all we have time for today. I'm Mavarini, and I'm here with Sophia Mant. This is Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.