Two parents said they refuse to buy their children new toys and don’t even turn on the heating during winter because it is a “useless pleasure.”
Simon and Malcolm Collins have been dubbed the “poster children” for a movement that believes large families are necessary for the future of civilization.
Known as pronatalism, the ideology promotes having a large brood of children as a means of coping with declining global birth rates, which its believers say will lead to the collapse of the economy as retirees eventually eclipse the working population.
The couple, who live in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, with their two sons (Octavian George, four, and Torsten Savage, two) and daughter, Titan Invictus, 16 months, even run their own charity to promote the style. of life called The Pragmatist.
Pronatalism is based on a “numbers game,” meaning that the more children produced, the more people will inherit not only genes but also the same perspective.
And although the couple want to have at least seven children together, they are convinced that their parenting method is “inherently low-effort.”
A pronatalist influencer has explained why he believes punching his children in the face is good for them in the long term, based on his observations of wild tigers.
The couple has become the face of the pronatalist movement in the United States.
Based on his readings of authors such as Bryan Caplan, Malcolm believes that genetics is even more important than education in a child’s development.
That’s why he and his wife don’t buy their children toys, but each of them has an iPad that hangs around their necks with a strap.
“Almost all toys are gifts. We don’t throw away anything they send us,” Malcolm told The Guardian.
Their young people cannot celebrate Christmas either, but Future Day.
Because the family is atheist and always takes a “scientific” approach to life, their approach to Christmas is aimed at promoting their children’s “moral framework.”
Unlike Santa Claus, the Future Police arrive taking all the children’s toys.
After the house is briefly cleared of toys, the young people must draw up a contract detailing how they will improve the world.
Once they have completed this task, the toys are returned to them in abundance.
The Pennsylvania couple are leading proponents of the theory that large families are necessary for the future of civilization through their charity, The Pragmatist Foundation.
In the photo: the Collins couple picking raspberries in a photograph shared on Instagram
“They get more gifts when they do what they said they were going to do,” Malcolm explained.
‘What does Christmas teach you? Getting random toys if you’re even vaguely good?
Malcolm, who grew up in a wealthy family in Dallas, also suggests that children aren’t really expensive.
He explained that they will not lead a more luxurious life the more they earn because they want to have a large offspring, but that does not mean that he will shell out money for their higher education.
‘We won’t be able to send them to a private school. “We are not going to be able to pay for their college,” she revealed.
Elaborating on how they planned to homeschool all of their children, Simone said: “We also didn’t raise them like they were retired millionaires.
‘(This) is what a lot of Americans do: take them as private drivers to soccer, juggling classes and robotics. We’re just not going to do that,” he joked.
“When people say, ‘I can’t afford to have kids,’ what they mean is, ‘I can’t afford to have kids by the standards that I consider culturally normative,'” Malcolm chimed in.
The parents revealed that every decision they have made so far is backed by data, even down to their children’s names.
The Pennsylvania couple are leading proponents of the theory that large families are necessary for the future of civilization through their charity, The Pragmatist Foundation.
Malcolm said he and his co-influencer wife Simone, 36, watched as feral cats reacted to unruly kittens with a quick swipe of their paw. They tried it with their own children and found it very effective, he explained.
The father wore matching red pajamas with his children and wife in photographs shared on Instagram
They wanted their children to have a strong sense of control, so they chose “strong names.”
“Girls who have gender-neutral names are more likely to have higher-paying careers and earn degrees in Stem,” she said.
‘We wanted to give our children strong names. “We want our children to have a strong internal locus of control.”
Although the pair have been determined to prepare their children for the future, parents have received a wave of calls to child welfare services from concerned members of the public.
During the interview with a Guardian journalist, Collins punched her two-year-old son in the face while they were having dinner at a restaurant.
The boy, named Torsten Savage, slammed his foot on the table, causing it to wobble, and his influencer father walked up and punched him in the face so hard that it was recorded on the journalist’s recorder.
At the time, they had been talking about Elon Musk, a father of eleven children, who shares Malcolm’s enthusiasm for pronatalism, an ideology that promotes high birth rates.
Malcolm Collins (pictured with his family), 37, left a Guardian journalist ‘horrified’ after he slapped his two-year-old son in the face while they dined at a restaurant in his hometown of Valley Forge , outside Philadelphia, on Saturday.
After hitting his son, he continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.
At the time, he justified the controversial parenting style to the journalist by drawing parallels with tigers and how they treat their misbehaving cubs.
“I was just giving you context so you don’t think I’m abusive or something,” Malcolm told the reporter, who said the slap wasn’t “hard” but was loud enough to hear on his voice recording.
Malcolm’s explanation of the physical response did not satisfy some readers, who raised concerns with child protection officials.
“Several people called (child welfare services) about this,” Malcolm told the New York Post on Sunday. “There is now an active movement to take away our children.”