I read a remarkable article (and by remarkable I mean, written about some incredibly self-deluded and weird people) the other day from the Guardian, an English source that I occasionally see links to.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/25/american-pronatalists-malcolm-and-simone-collins
Although the story is from an English journalist, it was about an American couple with three children, living in the country. They are part of something called the pronatalist movement which encourages people to have lots of children for ‘hyper rationalistic’ reasons. The article claims that the couple make all their decisions from ‘utilitarian principles and cool-headed logic’ based on data, because they are good atheists, and don’t believe in children for any religious reason. The article also claims that the movement is all about maximizing the numbers of children who will inherit your ‘genes, outlook, and worldview.’

I had to read that last comment several times before I could accept that it actually claims you can inherit world view, as opposed to working hard to teach a child what you believe. I don’t know whether the reporter believed this, or was just reporting on the couple, who most definitely believe it. I will also register that the couple says this isn’t eugenics but I didn’t understand their reasoning, and I’m not planning to try again.

The reporter has his/her own reasons for incredulity, saying that he ended up ‘utterly lost for words,’ although he wrote a very long article, using those lost words. What struck me about the situation was this.

The couple uses IVF to get pregnant and then the wife has Caesarians to give birth. No matter what you think about the morality of IVF, this is an unrealistic way to populate the earth with your kind of people. Fifty thousand dollars to get pregnant, or possibly a lot more, and another thirty-thousand dollars to give birth is completely unreal, compared to no particular cost to achieve pregnancy, and let’s say, five thousand dollars for a mid-wife. The Amish might even do it for less. I don’t know.

Do these ‘data-driven’ people have any sense at all? They are obviously wealthy and don’t seem to have any understanding of how that wealth is impacting their life and world-view.

The article goes on to discuss the three children already born. (The wife in the article is pregnant with her fourth, and gives birth a few weeks after being interviewed.) The children all have their own iPads and the two-year old walks around with his tablet tied to his neck, so he can’t lose it. Two-year old? This is insanity. There is no data that says iPads are a good idea for two year olds, and if someone showed me a study claiming such a thing, I would laugh at them for being gullible fools.

Do two year olds want to play with screens? Why, yes. Will they go for your phone and try to rip it out of your hand and poke every button on it to find out what will happen next? Why, yes. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to give it to them, unrestrictedly. Smart Phones and iPads are addictive. When you take away an addict’s drug the results are remarkably, constantly, problematic.

There are adults claiming that their use of media is wrecking their own concentration. Yet, somehow this stuff will be okay for kids. Sure. Anyway, it’s obvious that this hyper rationalistic couple is missing some of the data on childrearing that is available.

At the end of the article the husband says, “What a failure I would be if my kids hold my exact value system! … My kids are going to be like me, but better…” You wish, buddy. I would call this hubris, but actually when I sit back and think about what’s going on here, it’s just everyday blindness. The oldest child these people have is a four-year-old, yet they think they know how to tell the world about better families. I’m skeptical.

Long ago a really clever and intelligent woman who was homeschooling her children, started writing books about how to do it. Then her children turned into teenagers, and she started rewriting from a whole new perspective. Her methods were great for six to twelve year olds but needed a lot of tweaking after that. She had the grace and humility to see what was going on and adjust to it.

I’m not sure this pronatalist couple will be as honest. Bringing these children into the world was incredibly expensive. The husband and wife think that the effort is going to pay off because they are speeding up evolution, since they are choosing which embryo to birth, based on how it will think. (No, I’m not exaggerating.) I’m reminded of Alice von Hildebrand’s response to someone who claimed that he only believed in what he could see. Doing otherwise, he said, was stupid. She responded by asking him to show her what stupidity looked like under a microscope. If this couple were truly as data-driven as they claim, they would wait to see whether their methods actually work, especially as compared to other ways of bringing up children, before telling the world about it.

I suppose one reason I had such a visceral reaction to this story is that I love small children. I love watching them, and seeing the incredible effort they are making, right from birth, to master a new environment. These people do not like small children and they say so in the article. They do not believe that the effort a baby is making is worthy of notice. Small children need a lot of human interaction, and these kids get an iPad instead. Small children need to believe they are valued for themselves, and that is not what’s going on here. So sad.