Pronatalists Simone and Malcolm Collins photographed at their home in Audubon, Pennsylvania, March 10, 2023.
Photo: Winnie Au/Redux/Winnie Au/Redux
Simone and Malcolm Collins want you to think they’re enlightened. In the process of becoming the poster family for a resurgent pronatalist movement, the Pennsylvania couple has stressed their atheism, their elite IQs, and their commitment to cultural diversity. Their branding strategy has been somewhat successful. They certainly don’t look much like the large fundamentalist families I knew in my childhood. With their hipster glasses and Simone’s short hair they could be any family in Brooklyn. The children have Randian rather than biblical names; the latest, a girl, is Industry Americus. Both parents have received a great deal of press attention for their decision to have seven children. Business Insider profiled them in late 2022. A few months later, they appeared prominently in a viral 2023 piece for The Telegraph, which counted them among the “‘elite’ couples breeding to save mankind.” The Guardian joined in last week, with a lengthy profile whose headline called them America’s “premier pronatalists.”
The liberal British paper is at pains to point out that the Collinses aren’t Quiverfull, which it describes as “the fundamentalist Christian belief that large families are a blessing from God.” The atheist couple “believe in science and data, studies and research,” it goes on, and says the two are connected to the effective-altruism movement. “This is a numbers game, focused on producing the maximum number of heirs — not to inherit assets, but genes, outlook, and worldview,” The Guardian reported. “And it’s being advocated by some of the most successful names in tech.”
All true, to an extent. But there’s more to Quiverfull than the simple conviction that children are a divine blessing. Quiverfull families aren’t passive. They often believe that they, too, are saving mankind with their children. Demographic anxiety is baked into the belief system. They hope to remake society in their image — and that’s not too far off from what the Collinses say they believe, too. Like Quiverfull children, the Collins children aren’t just blessings, but pawns in a social movement. Beneath the cutting-edge gloss is an old ideology at work. The Collinses are as right wing as any Quiverfull family, as is the pronatalist movement writ large.
An April report in Politico examined NatalCon, where the Collinses appeared, and linked pronatalism to the New Right, “a conglomeration of people in the populist wing of the conservative movement who believe we need seismic changes to the way we live now — and who often see the past as the best model for the future they’d like to build.” The New Right isn’t cohesive, as Politico points out; some factions are religious, others aren’t, and they don’t necessarily agree with each other on all counts. Pronatalism, or natalism, can bring them together. People — really, people like them — aren’t having enough children, and the Western world is doomed to suffer unless we reverse the trend. Adherents can sound sensible, to an extent. “At first glance, this conference might look like something new: A case for having kids that is rooted in a critique of the market-driven forces that shape our lives and the shifts that have made our culture less family-oriented,” Politico reported. But as NatalCon wore on, old ideas resurfaced, Politico added: “Throughout the day, speakers and participants hint at the other aspects of modern life that worried them about future generations in the U.S. and other parts of the West: divorce, gender integration, ‘wokeness,’ declining genetic ‘quality.’” I’ve heard sermons that are just as subtle.
As Politico reported and The Guardian reaffirmed, Simone Collins is running for office in Pennsylvania as a Republican. Though she is pro-choice, which sets her apart from most in her party, and selected embryos for optimum health and intelligence, which is anathema to many anti-abortion activists, the couple are perfectly legible as conservatives. Their home is stocked with guns in addition to bear spray and a bow and arrows. Her husband, Malcolm, told The Guardian the weapons are for home defense. They get death threats, he explained. They plan to homeschool, because of course they do. The fundamentalists I knew might sympathize with them in one other respect, too: The Collinses are fond of corporal punishment. In an act that shocks The Guardian reporter, Malcolm hits his young son in the face.
“Smacking is not illegal in Pennsylvania,” the paper duly reports. Malcolm Collins tells the paper that he and Simone were inspired by “tigers in the wild,” who strike at misbehaving cubs with their paws. Nevertheless, the mask has slipped, not that it was ever firmly tied on. The Collinses have tried to defend themselves since the article’s publication. Their critics are racist because other cultures practice corporal punishment, they’ve said. They don’t spank or support corporal punishment “intended to cause pain or harm.” (What, then, is the point of a slap to the face?) The absence of physical punishment has damaged Generations Z and Alpha, they argued, sans evidence. Though research overwhelmingly links corporal punishment to negative mental-health outcomes, the Collinses, who allegedly believe in science, released a YouTube video explaining why they don’t believe any of it.
My own parents practiced corporal punishment, thanks in part to the teachings of Christian psychologist James Dobson. I became an anxious and depressed child, and now I’m an anxious and depressed adult — an anecdotal experience that is common among people who were struck as children, according to the available research. The Collinses aren’t likely readers of James Dobson. They are atheists, after all. But their views are just as brutal as anything I encountered during my upbringing in the Christian right. And although the Collinses say they don’t want to raise automatons, their nakedly ideological approach to family life tells us something about the way they hope their kids turn out. Here’s something else I can tell them. You can raise your kids almost however you want in America. At some point, though, they develop their own minds. Perhaps they’ll follow you, and have large families, and become titans of industry like Elon Musk, another pronatalist. Or perhaps they won’t, and all that press, all that abuse, will be for nothing.
There’s a lesson in here for the New Right, too. It’s obsessed with power, but there’s a reason it must rely so often on anti-democratic means to accomplish its goals. The movement’s convictions and methods simply aren’t that popular, and public opinion is difficult to control. Brute force can transform a family, or at the nation-state level, a society. At the same time, it breeds resentment and, at times, opposition. Hit someone long enough, and they’ll either break or fight back. Best of luck to the Collinses’ children, and to us. We all need it.
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