Why Elon Musk and JD Vance want a US baby boom
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If people don't start having more babies, then civilization could collapse. That's the warning from ProNatalist, a small but growing group of people who are concerned about declining birth rates in developed countries like the United States.

They say that fewer babies means fewer future workers, and that means a smaller economy where young people are struggling to take care of an aging population. It's not a rosy picture. But, pronatalists say there is a solution. "I would love to have as many children as I can physically have." In short, they want to make America procreate again.

On today's episode, we're going to hear more about the pro-natalist movement, and you're going to meet a woman who wants to have as many babies as she can, whether that's seven, ten, or a dozen. I'm William Lee Adams, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service. ♪

Here to tell us more is the BBC's population correspondent, Stephanie Hegarty. Stephanie, hello. Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming in. Now, population correspondent, that's one of the more unique BBC job titles. And no, you're not a census worker. Could you clarify, what do you cover, what do you report on, and why is it so important?

So I look at any changing demographic trends and how they affect how we live. And there's a lot of these at the moment. We're going through a time where we're seeing fertility decline, populations decline, and we're also seeing places where there's still a lot of population growth. And all of that to say you're the perfect person to explain pro-natalism. What are the origins of the movement?

Well, pronatalism has probably existed for centuries, the idea that it's a good thing to have children. But what is different now in this movement, and it is quite recent, is that we've seen fertility rates decline quite dramatically in the past few years. So for the past 50 years, fertility rates in developing countries have been declining from an average, globally it was an average of about six per woman in the 1950s, and now globally it's

just about 2.3 per woman. So over the past 50 years, this has been happening. But it's recently we've seen a much,

more rapid decline. And in the U.S., where this pronatalism movement is gaining strength and influence, they've seen fertility decline quite rapidly in the past decade or so. And I've read that it's described as a fringe movement in the U.S. How many people are we talking about and who are they? Well, it depends what you mean by fringe. It's a small number of people. There's a small number of people who are

pushing the idea that big families are good for America, good for the world. There was a conference in March and there was probably people who attended the conference told me it was a few hundred people, not much more than that. But they're not fringe when it comes to their influence because these are people that are connected to some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. So Elon Musk is a friend of this movement, a believer in this idea that it's great to procreate. He has at least 14 children with

three or four different women. This is very much a philosophy of his. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, he's an adherent to this as well. And then J.D. Vance, the vice president, who also comes from this kind of Silicon Valley tech culture, he's an adherent too. He only has three kids himself, but apparently believes in big families.

And you've been speaking to one of these big families, the Collins family. That's Simone and Malcolm Collins. They're in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Can you tell us a bit more about them? So Simone and Malcolm Collins are quite an unusual couple in that they are firmly pronatalists. They believe in having as many children as they can. They have four so far. They've had these children through IVF because of fertility issues. I believe Simone is pregnant with her fifth child.

And they're intimately connected with this bubble of tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley because Malcolm and Simone worked in that bubble before and they're tech investors themselves. But they have quite an unusual lifestyle and they live in this farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Simone is basically getting pregnant as often as she can to produce as many children as they can have.

And when we think of large families, I think a lot of people think about Christian fundamentalism and this idea that having a big family is a gift from God. But with the Collins, it's not exactly that, is it? No, they're not overtly religious. They claim to be Calvinists and they're creating this kind of techno-Puritan culture.

proto-religion, culture, but they are allied with a lot of these Christian families. So the pronatalist movement and the people who are at this conference in March are a mix of these kind of tech bros who want to have big families, tech bros who want to find wives to have big families with, and then Christian families, more traditional, and Jewish families, religious families who have

more traditionally had lots of children. I spoke to many people in the movement, they described it as a coalition of the willing or an unholy alliance, one woman described it as, because you've got these real competing desires. So traditional Christian families are often against abortion. They're quite traditional in their ideas of roles for men and women. They're usually completely

quite anti-LGBT culture and definitely anti-LGBT parents and adoption and that kind of thing. Whereas the tech bubble, Peter Thiel himself is a gay man who has adopted children. The Collinses are not overtly anti-abortion. They're very pro-IVF, which a lot

of people in the more Christian side of things don't agree with. So that's where we have this unholy alliance. It's a really interesting mix of people. And Stephanie, let's pause for a moment and actually hear from Simone Collins. Here she is discussing her motivations.

With demographic collapse, I'm worried not about the elite tech people that are often attributed with championing this cause, but rather the most vulnerable people in society. Like with climate change, demographic collapse disproportionately affects the people who are most dependent on social services, on governments working, on medical assistance from governments. And when you run out of taxpayers who can fund those programs, including pensions, infrastructure development, police, fire security, things like that,

you have huge swaths of people who are not only vulnerable, who not only don't have enough money for food or medical care, but who will likely die. So this is a very serious and very scary issue. And if governments can't figure out how to continue to support the vulnerable people in their societies when they run out of a taxpaying base due to so many old people, we are in really big trouble. ♪

There's a lot to unpack there. Could you give us some evidence that civilization could collapse, as she says, if birth rates continue to decline? So this is a huge claim, and it's more of a kind of

than anything that's based in fact. There is one salient fact, and that is that fertility rates are declining in America and lots of other developed countries. Whether that means that society will collapse is then up to so many different things. So when fertility rates decline, fewer young people are born. And that means, you know, in 20 years, when those people start working, there'll be fewer people in the workforce. Right.

But there are lots of ways to deal with that or adapt to that, that governments could consider beyond convincing people to have more babies. Convincing people to have more babies is just one way to solve a kind of lopsided economy. You know, for example, you could tax people more. That wouldn't be very popular, of course, with some sections of society.

But also you could raise the retirement age so people work longer, but that also might not be popular. You could try and convince more women to stay in the workforce. There are lots of different ways you can get around this problem. So the idea that it's going to inevitably cause civilizational collapse is a big blame. Before we sat down, I did a search for pronatalism and the images that came up overwhelmingly featured white people.

Is there any fear that this movement might be masking white supremacy or some type of desire to repopulate the world with white people? At the conference in March, there were several people who had, speakers at the conference, who have also written about or spoken about this idea of race science.

So they say that there is scientific evidence that essentially black people are less smart than white people. And this is based in years of racist pseudoscience, essentially. So there is a very racist pseudoscience theory

pseudoscientific underbelly to a lot of this. That is really quite disturbing. Another thing that comes up in this movement in their many blogs and YouTube videos and tweets is the idea of a great replacement. So this is the theory that white people in the US, in Europe are being replaced by brown people and black people essentially. And that this is a kind of conspiracy on the part of elites. This comes up all the time.

And it's very racist. It's anti-immigration, though many of the people would deny that. Moving forward, do you see this movement getting bigger? Do you think that it will have an impact and people will want to have more kids? I think that people already want to have more kids, but there are barriers to that. One of them is economics, money, finances, housing.

And what this movement may achieve is to get the administration in the U.S. to try and address some of those barriers. But it may not do that. It depends whether the policies that this movement are suggesting will be effective in removing the barriers that people are finding to having kids in the U.S.

So far, some of the policies that have been suggested are things like a baby bonus, an investment account for a baby. So I think it was part of the big, beautiful bill that Trump has been talking about. Every baby born between in Trump's time in office will have a thousand dollars invested into an account for them.

This is essentially a baby bonus. And countries like Hungary, South Korea, Russia, they've tried this in the past where you just give parents an upfront lump sum to have a baby. They don't generally tend to have that much of an impact on whether people decide to have kids or not, because having a kid is such a long-term investment that's going to cost you hundreds of thousands over the course of your lifetime, probably. So a thousand pounds in an account when your baby is born, I'm not sure it's going to make a huge difference, I suppose.

I suppose we'll see. Stephanie, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to another episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm William Lee Adams. We'll see you again soon.

Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage.

Plus, your super light and ultra durable pocket hose copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting radio exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free pocket pivot and their 10-pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size copperhead hose. Just text WATER to 64000. That's WATER to 64000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64000.

Bye.