Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dissect the new pronatalist book "What Are Children For?" by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. This in-depth discussion explores the challenges of promoting childbearing within a progressive framework and the broader implications for demographic trends.

Key points covered:

* Overview of "What Are Children For?" and its reception

* The difficulty of justifying childbearing in a progressive worldview

* Analysis of the book's central themes and claims

* The impact of soft cultures on attitudes towards parenthood

* The importance of having an objective function in life decisions

* Critique of progressive arguments against having children

* The unintended consequences of fertility strikes

* The role of overthinking in modern parenting anxieties

* How pronatalist arguments can reach progressive audiences

Whether you're interested in demographics, cultural trends, or the intersection of politics and family planning, this video offers a thought-provoking analysis of the challenges facing pronatalism in progressive circles.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody. It's Simone Collins here. And I'm so glad to see you here today. I am taking over this podcast. Oh no! It's been taken

Malcolm Collins: over!

Simone Collins: Yeah, because I am going to lead the discussion today. I've decided not to phone it in. And we are going to talk today about a new Pronatalist book that came out called What Are Children For?

Which is basically the left's attempt to At pronatalism it is a book that we were just told about by a friend at a conference and she basically explained it as this is the pronatalist argument. But from the perspective of a, an educated Brooklyn elite, who's highly progressive.

Yeah, but they got like

Malcolm Collins: an opinion piece in the New York Times, for example. Yeah, it got

Simone Collins: an opinion piece in the New York Times. It got a write up in the New Yorker. Obviously and they would never even consider giving us a platform. We

Malcolm Collins: have done we've reached out to them before. They don't,

Simone Collins: No. They don't talk to us, but they do talk to them. Because this was co written by two of their people. [00:01:00] Yeah. And so obviously we're super excited to read this book because, oh my gosh, maybe. Because we cannot apparently speak to pronatalism in a way that gets progressives excited. Maybe two progressive pronatalists could speak to progressives in a way that gets them excited.

And so they did, and so I read the book. Um, and okay, let me just start off by giving you the book's description, Malcolm, and I want to get your impression because I've read the book, Malcolm has not. Let's see what you think. So this is What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman.

It came out on June 11th. So right now only three Three reviews have been written about it. It's very new. Here's the description becoming a parent. Once the expected outcome of adulthood is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life, we seek self fulfillment, we want to liberate women to find meaning and self worth outside the home, and we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of climate change.

Weighing on the [00:02:00] pros and cons of having children, Millennials and Zoomers are finding it increasingly difficult to judge in favor. With lucid argument and passionate prose, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman offer the guidance necessary to move beyond uncertainty. The decision whether or not to have children, they argue, is not just a woman's issue, but a basic human one.

And at a time when climate change worries threaten the very legitimacy of human reproduction, Berg and Wiseman conclude that neither our personal nor collective failures ought to prevent us from embracing the fundamental goodness of human life, not only in the present, but in choosing to have children in the future.

So what do you think of this description?

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: What's your impression here?

Malcolm Collins: I mean that it is what you said it is. It is pronatalism. And progressives are screwed. If they can't figure out a prenatalist cultural subfaction, their entire value system is going to go extinct. Yeah. And a lot [00:03:00] of people look at us and they think that we're like, secretly trying to save the progressives or something like that.

I would like some aspect of their culture to survive, but I don't want them to have the cultural dominance they have now. I think that's, they've shown that they basically become Nazis whenever they gain cultural power and they start dividing humans by ethnic group. I'm going to

Simone Collins: say a lot of the things that progressives fight for that they, they say they want pluralism.

Freedom of lifestyle, et cetera, are things that we very much support. It's just that in terms of what they actually allow for and support, progressives don't tend to do that in practice today.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, in a way that aligns with our values.

Simone Collins: And that's what you're talking about. We actually do care about progressive values, but the progressive movement now does not actually support those values.

That's what you're saying.

Malcolm Collins: It is it's wild that this has become the case. I think the parties have flipped basically with Trump. But anyway, so the interesting thing as a person like me is hearing you read this [00:04:00] and seeing your reaction to this and you guys haven't had to live with Simone while she was reading this.

Oh

Simone Collins: No. We're going to go over. All these things. And you're going to react to all my little bits. I have all these little things I can share with you about the book, but we're just, I'm just getting your impression on the description as provided by the publishers.

Malcolm Collins: I feel like I've just been read like Miranda rights.

This is about to like, that was a trigger warning for conservatives. That entire intro was a trigger.

Simone Collins: Okay. All right. I'll give you my TLDR because you say you should never bury the lead in these videos. I read this book. It included things like literary analysis, because that's apparently a necessary part of discussion of prenatalism, which this is clearly why we're not convincing any progressives.

We forgot the literary analysis

Malcolm Collins: in this context. What do you mean? Huh? Explain literary analysis. I, as a listener, don't know what you mean by they did. Okay. They, the

Simone Collins: authors literally talk about a series of books. There's one chapter where they just talk about books on motherhood they were written by various highfalutin fiction authors, and then there's another chapter where they talk about books [00:05:00] that are about climate, changing climate disasters.

In fact, one of the reviews of this book complains about the fact that there were spoilers in the literary analysis. That was one of her primary complaints because she cared enough to actually, go and read these books, which is, I think also interesting, reading all this literary analysis, it actually took me back to my high school days.

And it, I realized that the reaction I had at the end of this book was very similar to the reaction I had after finishing The Grapes of Wrath. Where you read that scene with the weird birth in the barn that was supposed to be like analogous to Jesus or something. And you're just like, what the f**k happened to me?

Everything is terrible. And that is where I ended this book. What the f**k happened to me? And everything is terrible. And before I wanted to bring all my, my criticisms of the book to you and actually air them on this podcast because I am very concerned about leaving a somewhat critical review of this book in video form without being justified in it.

I [00:06:00] went and looked at the other reviews to be like, am I crazy? Did this book basically leaves no reason to have kids. So the punchline to what are kids for or reasons for having kids. There are none. Bad.

Malcolm Collins: Because I do not think you can justify above reproductive childbearing rates within a progressive moral framework.

Simone Collins: Genuinely. It, it seems like what children are for is nothing. Children should not. It's a book.

Malcolm Collins: No. But I, from what you told me, it's a book about why you may want one.

Simone Collins: Not even that. I can't find justification in this book, even for one kid. But anyway it turns out the three reviews that exist so far, there's a total of four, but one on Amazon was also published on Goodreads.

All of them were by people who were sent the book by a publisher who clearly wanted them to post reviews. Two of them are from mothers, one, a mother of six. And I'll just read you from the one person who left a review. As a member of the actual target audience, which is, a progressive woman who does not yet have kids.

Shannon [00:07:00] Whitehead wrote I appreciate the book's premise and liked it overall, but it's not the guide it bills itself as. The summary describes what are children for as quote an argument with quote unquote guidance on how to overcome parenthood ambivalence. However, it's more a collection of various people's thoughts on having children throughout history.

The author has definitely added to these perspectives, but as someone who absolutely is the target audience for this book, I don't find much of what I would consider guidance or advice. Which, okay. So I'm not crazy. Cause part of me was like, Oh, I'm just too dumb for this educated progressive view.

Like I'm just, it's going over my head. The literary analysis,

Malcolm Collins: reading a cultural framework that we are not familiar with and may not pick up some of the nuances in like Jewish literature. I'm not going to necessarily catch everything a Jewish person would catch. Yes, but here is, I think what the book actually is.

And I think that you are engaging with it incorrectly.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I think that a progressive woman was thinking about having [00:08:00] kids and then decided to do what was essentially a progressive literature review on the subject of having kids. Now, if you think like us, like you're some sort of a rationalist nerd and you're doing a literature review, you're going over all the research and everything like that.

If you're a progressive and you're doing what is for them a cultural literature review, they are going over all of the thoughts, anyone in the. intellectual intelligentsia zeitgeist has had in modern times or in history about having kids. So this is like a, the arts literature review of what the intellectual intelligentsia has to say about the meaning of human life.

And I think fundamentally what you and this other person took away from it is that they just don't have strong arguments for it because I think that the larger, so when people, when we say the larger progressive ideology is fundamentally anti natalist, I should probably [00:09:00] explain what I mean by that. We argue that the urban monoculture, which is what progressivism largely is, it's this cultural framework that exists around the world, mostly concentrated in urban centers.

It's a modern memetic virus. You can look at our video, The Anatomy of the Urban Monoculture, if you want to go deeper on this. But it's core draw is Come to us and you won't have to experience any in the moment emotional suffering. And so this is where like trigger warnings come from. This is where the haze movement comes from.

This is where like we're going to hand out meth, meth on the streets comes from. Like it, these things, Make no sense if you are operating within most moral frameworks. That's why I bring them up. Like the idea of telling somebody that eating too much is going to make them unhealthy and suffer in the long run doesn't make sense in most even like basic utilitarian frameworks.

So you need this very strange moral set where like in the moment, emotional pain is the ultimate negative trigger warnings, for example, fall into this as well. And there is the way that you resolve emotional pain in this [00:10:00] framework is clearly remove humans. You remove humans, you remove emotional pain.

Every additional human is just a being that might, at some point, experience emotional pain, and therefore should not come into exist. And you also have this problem downstream of broad utilitarian frameworks, it's just less immediate, which is they, if you take a a broad utilitarian framework, but then lean heavily on the negative utilitarian side, which progressive culture definitely does, like it sees the fact that humans suffer, As much more of a negative than the fact that they feel emotional.

Good. There's not a way that you can motivate, when telling a parent, if I'm telling them, you need to have over X many kids, the argument I need to be presenting them with and I think that the good book that does this is selfish reasons to have more kids, Brian, I think that's the book that has actually convinced a number of progressives and he's actually responsible for like at least a hundred people that exist in the world today or more, but these are like the ones.[00:11:00]

Because selfish reasons to have more kids engages with progressive culture as it really exists, which is a woman asking, how will having kids improve my life? The problem is that the kids often don't improve your life. That's not the point of kids. It's to give them a good life. And so when you have kids to improve your life, You end up with all of the stuff we talk about in our video about the parents who regret having kids and why this is a rising trend.

I feel like the people who would be convinced by this book would end up regretting their decision to have kids. And you mentioned that at the end of the book, even the author seems to regret her decision. Yeah, one

Simone Collins: of the two authors has has a kid at the end of the book and describes her. experiences a mother and she sounds like a genuinely miserable mother who regrets having kids and is still extremely ambivalent about the choice to have kids and is trying to just be like, but it's meaningful.

Which is crazy. And, [00:12:00] I think what you're saying is right about them just doing the literature review of. The experts when trying to evaluate this but then not really finding anything that justifies it like one Mother who wrote a review says this book has a lot of references to feminist texts often citing works The works of Rachel Kusk and Sheila Hetty this provides a reader with additional materials to seek out and read more about direct experiences with motherhood and ambivalence and I don't necessarily think this book would be a directly helpful guide to those struggling with the decision to have children.

While there is an exploration of different arguments, including climate change, not finding a suitable partner, financial concerns, and self interest, there is perhaps, obviously, no direct path to coming to a conclusion for yourself. I would also say that the author's perspectives on motherhood seem to skew slightly negative, which is obviously not everyone's experience.

Who have children, . So even like other reviewers of the book who've been given free copies presumably because they will write positive reviews are kind of like, it's clear these [00:13:00] women don't wanna have children. Yeah. Which

Malcolm Collins: is crazy.

Simone Collins: And yet

Malcolm Collins: this thing I actually think that what this book is and I think it's something we're gonna see increasingly as the culture wars shift in the direction of Tism is.

There is a faction of progressive women who will recognize. That having kids is a moral good, like their worldview, that everything we say, their worldview, their perspectives on reality are going to die out. This progressive cultural framework that they champion is slated for extinction right now. And therefore, from their perspective, it is a moral good to have kids.

And now they need to come up with a logical structure that can motivate this decision that they've reached at from a logical deduction from their higher order moral framing. The problem is that there is no. Real or good logical framework that motivates kids in a progressive world view.

Simone Collins: I think something else that plays it Intuitively, I think a lot of progressive women really want to have children and yet [00:14:00] the culture they've adopted prevents them from enjoying it and the lifestyle that they choose and the approach to parenting that they feel they have to take prevents them from enjoying it when I read the final chapter where one of the authors describes her experience as a parent of a young girl Um it's clear that she could have had a good experience as a mother, but the way that she chooses to raise her daughter and the fact that she only has one child actually makes it just really hard and stressful and a fairly miserable experience.

But let's let's go ahead. I wanted to discuss with you, because I think this is something interesting some of the central themes and claims of the book. There are three, so I'm going to read them off to you and then you can tell me what your thoughts are on them. Because I think that these are the core things with which you and I would probably disagree.

And I found it quite interesting. So one central claim and theme is that Either going back to or creating a hard culture is impossible. That's a big thing, and of course, clearly we're of a very different How would they

Malcolm Collins: present this argument? I, this is obviously our It was

Simone Collins: it was explicitly [00:15:00] discussed, but in a very offhand and of course we can't go back, and we also couldn't create a new one.

That was, it basically just said like that.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, so they just offhandedly are like, you can't recreate Yeah, they're just like,

Simone Collins: offhand of course you couldn't just go back and create a new culture. It was that explicit. So I thought that was really interesting. But just basically zero And that, the pithiness with which that was expressed Demonstrates the extent to which they've given very little thought.

Malcolm Collins: I actually think that this is really important because you need to ask, like, why didn't they say that could be a solution, like altering their cultural framework? And the answer is because you could not stay within the urban monoculture if you created a, a. Side cultural group that wouldn't see the threat to it, so they literally can't like Struggled herself to sleep by the way.

Oh, no, you're awake again. Sorry carry on

That is so sweet if she did present it. God, I don't remember what I was saying there

Simone Collins: If they [00:16:00] did develop a hard culture, they by definition wouldn't be progressive anymore, which is a big deal

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's funny that's basically what we did we were progressives who'd been, ended up developing our culture and are like, okay, now we are more, mindful of the curative framework.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So here's another very pervasive theme, and I think this is especially crucial, which is that the readers, sorry, the authors and the readers of this book, and basically every woman whose perspective they mention in their literary analysis, in all of their other references, lack an objective function.

We define an objective function is basically a few, or just one thing of inherent value that you yourself have chosen. To optimize your life around it. This is the thing you're seeking to maximize. And it could be the wellbeing of all humankind. It could be the wellbeing of all sentient animals and beings.

It could be serving God. It could be having fun. It could be whatever, right? No one reading or writing this book has an objective function. And this is the very source of that ambivalence about parenthood. Because as [00:17:00] soon as you have an objective function and then an ideology on how you're going to maximize that thing, or those things that you're going to maximize in your life.

You have an answer as to whether or not you're going to have kids,

Malcolm Collins: period. Because this is what I'm optimizing for. By the way, if you don't have an objective function and you are interested in developing one yourself without a lot of bias read The Pragmatist's Guide to Life. We wrote that during a time in our life where we were much less ideologically biased than we are now.

And I think it is as close as a true neutral resource for finding an objective function.

Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: To clarify objective function. In other words, it's what you're saying. It is a moral framework for interacting with reality. IE, this is what I think is good. This is what I think is bad. And at what measures you think those things are truly good and bad.

And then you can just use that to plug into a moral equation when you're making individual decisions should I have kids? But I also would say the answer if you're like, how do I if you're genuinely like. How do I morally justify having kids? [00:18:00] Like you're, or in this progressive culture, the actual argument I would most use is to say you're doing it for them and not you don't think about you or a society or anything like that.

This is an entire human who's going to live a hundred years or 80 years. Who knows what's technology being, what it is now. Who's going to experience an entire life and you can create this multiplicatively based on the level of sacrifice you're willing to make. How much are you willing to sacrifice to give other humans the chance to live?

And then you could say, oh, but then I could take the money into whatever and just give it to people in Africa or whatever, right? Yeah, but those people are different from you. They're culturally different from you, they're genetically different from you, they're not going to experience the same type of life as you.

So you are exchanging one of those lives for another one of those lives. Here is where progressives can't come up with an answer to this. They would then say, Yes, [00:19:00] but all lives are exactly equal. And I might be like, That might be true from a universal perspective, but that is not true from a parent's perspective.

Your child's life as a parent is not equal to every other child on the world. I'm telling you that in absolute sense, you're, you, the parent who says that my child's life is equal to a random child growing up in another country, I'd say nope, and there's probably something emotionally wrong with you if you think that because even if at a universal perspective, all human lives may be equal we do disproportionately value ideologically, even the lives of those who are closer to us than the lives of those who are further from us.

And it is one of those lives that you are creating with the sacrifice, but the progressive moral framework doesn't allow them to say that. So you can't really pierce with this argument. Anyway, so

Simone Collins: the third element and core premise [00:20:00] of this book is that the authors and pretty much everyone that they're describing as well are raised by parents who are in soft or super soft cultures or even parents who themselves were raised by parents of soft cultures.

So we are seeing either one or two generations in to soft or super soft cultures. And I think that's also really important is that These people predominantly were raised by also people who were not from hard cultures, and that definitely shows. There are some, there are just a few exceptions in the book, but I think what's important to note is that At this juncture in society, it's not that like people for the first time are going soft.

It's that we're seeing multiple generations into soft culture. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: we abandoned the religious systems that we co evolved with. A lot of people I think expected the majority of the effect of this abandonment to happen in the generation that was abandoning these systems. Exactly. But it turns out it most of the There's a certain amount

Simone Collins: of inertia.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there's inertia. But also I think most of the benefits of these systems are [00:21:00] actually transmuted during childhood. So even if, for example, and I see this with Mormons, we've talked about it in other videos, even if a Mormon leaves the faith, if I interact with them and they were raised in a Mormon household, I can immediately tell that they were raised in a Mormon household.

Like the way they interact is very different than the way other people interact. And it's generally more emotionally healthy than the way other people interact, whether they stayed in the faith or stayed out of the faith. And I say this as a non mormon, so this is me, just elevating also true with Jews I've met, Jews who grew up in religiously observant households, even if they've left, typically have that vibe as adults and are more emotionally healthy and stuff like that.

You don't begin to see the mental breakdown that comes from leaving a hard tradition that you were raised in. Until you get to the generation that was raised in their childhood without even that tradition.

Simone Collins: That's right.

Malcolm Collins: In what these people look like from the [00:22:00] perspective of society, when you see them, when you interact with them, is like a robot that's like short circuiting.

The book feels from what Simone was telling me in terms of reading it is Like the active breakdown of progressive culture in real time. So derived from any sort of hard cultural framework that makes demands of an individual that puts that expects discipline, whether it is external discipline or self discipline on an individual.

That's why progressives freak out at us. We've said that's why they freak out at Starship Troopers. This world, you should watch our Starship Troopers videos, that is totally equal ruled by a black African female, Sky Marshall Tahat Marul, the entire planet is where the genders, all the genders are the same in the shower.

What's the one thing that's different? What's the one thing that makes it the fascist dystopia to them? That you are expected to do something. You are expected to sacrifice something yourself. For the rest of humanity, if you are going to take on a role in terms of deciding the [00:23:00] future of that society, i.

e. voting and when you completely remove discipline from individuals lives and the expectation of sacrifice from individuals lives and you do this intergenerationally, you get this short circuiting and static. Which I think is what this book is. And I would encourage, if our words end up being remembered in the future.

'cause I don't think this book's gonna end up doing very well given the number of reviews it has so far and stuff like that. When, and we're doing

Simone Collins: our

Malcolm Collins: best to promote it right

Simone Collins: now, by the way. Yeah. We're doing our

Malcolm Collins: best to

Simone Collins: promote it. I know for example, that at least one of the listeners and listeners of this podcast was present with me.

at Manifest when we were told by another woman, a friend of ours that, you know, about this book. And she said, this is great. This is exactly what I need because she herself is progressive. And she wanted to hear this argument. So even people watching this podcast are the target audience for this book.

And I am here to promote it. We were going to [00:24:00] have the authors on, but that that the follow up and connection never took place. Y'all are welcome, by the way, to come on and talk

Malcolm Collins: about this. Hold on, I have to finish this statement. When you future anthropologists are trying to understand how progressive culture, how the dominant culture in the world, the first culture that basically ruled the entire world, through the UN, through the American government, how did it suddenly kill itself within one generation?

This book will hold the keys to their way of seeing reality that you in the future are no longer able to model.

Simone Collins: Anyway, some positives. I learned some things that I didn't expect from the book. For example, they cited one study, which I had not come across. They found that many women freezing eggs are not in highly paid careers.

They just needed to separate fertility constraints from finding the right partner. And I think that's quite interesting. We might even do a whole podcast on this because, they pointed out [00:25:00] that one of the major constraints of course, is actually finding the right partnering and someone who listens to this podcast to point it out to you, Malcolm, I think.

That really what we should be promoting isn't having kids, but just actually having a wholesome, healthy marriage, because that is the bottleneck in so many of these cases.

Malcolm Collins: I think we do that through our interactions as we show and we model a possibility that I think a lot of people are just unaware of.

And I would say for the women who are doing this is the problem because I've talked to these women. Okay. And they're not finding good partners. There are a lot of good men. Out there looking for a wife right now. They are not finding good partners because two, they are using as a benchmark for the type of partners that they can get as the type of partners who while polyamorous will date them.

Lady, let me tell you what, if a guy is dating four other women and he's also dating you or he's dating you, but he's saying, eh I'm not going to be exclusive with you. Of course, I'm going to be dating other women. That person is going to be a much higher [00:26:00] quality male than you can secure within a monogamous market.

That's just clear. Like you will not get that. You need to be dating like three or four. And also if

Simone Collins: you have a child with that man, his value on the market will plummet. And suddenly

Malcolm Collins: sometimes secure him. So do be aware of that. That is a pretty good gambit that we've mentioned in another podcast. The other thing I'd say is a lot of these women are looking for progressive men.

And there are two progressive women for everyone. Progressive men. You, I do not think that. Most progressive men are emotionally healthy. They're generally like psychological wrecks who are like seeing a psychologist every week. So yeah. Sorry. I know we're not supposed to shame seeing a psychologist anywhere, but the modern iteration of psychology is just so harmful.

So to these women, you gotta break out of that. You gotta break out of the, that, that mindset because that is not where you're going to find the good guys.

Simone Collins: I also did not know that weapon. They're sorry that women try to [00:27:00] weaponize their fertility. Tell me about this by saying that they'll refuse to have kids or out of protest because others such as family members are not doing enough to fight climate change or that they're like not voting Democrat.

And there are groups like Birthstrike and No Future Children that are Oh, we need to look these up. I know, I need to, yeah, we need to maybe do a whole episode on those. I did learn some interesting things. The reasons that they presented for not having kids are pretty much all the typical reasons you'd expect.

Being forced to compromise their careers, which is totally fair. I think that's a huge reason to not have kids. That's why I said I wasn't going to have kids. Not finding a suitable partner, high cost, concerned about not being able to give the kids the same upbringing they received, like going to college without going into debt.

Then of course there's just the typical negative utilitarianism, climate change, and then just misery being a parent. And I think that's due to the unreasonable expectations. This

Malcolm Collins: is actually really interesting is the idea of a fertility strike. So fertility strikes only work on your genetic [00:28:00] relatives.

And yet progressives don't seem to understand this. There was that case in Canada that we did the joke on that I'll play here.

Oh, good, look, your friends are here! Hey!

You're supposed to want to have children. And this is your ultimate goal in life. It is a very archaic idea and old idea and representation of a woman.

 So you you're getting people to sign a petition.

pledge, basically saying that they will not have Children until the Canadian government takes serious action on climate change.

Is that your blood? What, no. No, it's college kid blood. And how many people have signed on so far. 1, 381 as of right now. I know what this is. This is a suicide pact. Oh my god, that makes so much sense. , we have got to hide all of the sharp objects!

if only I was born with a vagina. To solve that problem. Amen, sister.

 Holy [00:29:00] mother of God! Some kid, he just hucked himself right into the wood chipper! What? Head first, right into the wood chipper! It looked like it might have been one of the college kids..

Malcolm Collins: Where they tried to do a fertility strike for climate change, like a bunch of young women. And I'm like, okay, me as somebody who doesn't care about climate change, I'm glad you're leaving the gene pool, right?

Like the people who already care about climate change. They're the people who you're appealing to is this, right? And so presumably you can't get them to vote more Democrat than they're already voting, right? So they don't matter. Like the metric of similarity to yourself that you are demarcating here is the metric that decides your enemies and allies.

So you're not really pushing anyone. So why would women think that this would work? And it is because they view the world with a completely socialist mindset. They genuinely believe that all children belong to the state and not to the family, not to the cultural group. And because of [00:30:00] that, They believe that a progressive woman threatening to not have kids is going to motivate a, for example, conservative man to change his perspective, when I'm just like, okay, good riddance.

I would be the worst Noah. I don't know if I've ever said, the fairies and the unicorns, they're like I hate you and I'm not getting on the raft. And I'd be like, give him the bird and go on the raft. I'm like, I don't care. You guys can drown. And that's really where we are right now.

Is a lot of groups react. angrily when you point out the truth that if people like them cannot motivate fertility, they're going to disappear in the future.

Simone Collins: Yeah. There was also some butthurt in the book that just got me angry. They were complaining that egg freezing and IVF is tough because there are needles.

And you can't have sex during the egg freezing round. And I'm like, like the, just the sheer amount of, and they also didn't point out, they pointed out a little bit of how expensive it is, but it just, it bothered me. And then they also argue, of course, it's women can't have [00:31:00] it all.

And I think that goes back to this major issue of people. who read this book and wrote this book did not have objective functions because you can have it all if you know what you care about you can have all that you care about if you choose what you care about because then you know there are two different versions of having it all there's having it all with an objective function where I literally have it all But I have many of the things that people would want if they don't have an objective function that they don't have.

For example, we don't do a ton of travel internationally anymore, obviously, because we have kids. We don't eat out I don't buy a lot of stuff. So I don't have it all in those ways, but also those are not things I care about. I literally have everything that I care about and that's great.

And I think that's how a lot of other mothers feel who have objective functions is they know exactly what they want. They know exactly what doesn't matter to them and they're able to have everything that they want because it's actually not that much. And that's why I think it's so important to have an objective function, but yeah, so to the point of [00:32:00] literary analysis, it was actually within the literary analysis portion of the book.

That I inadvertently came across what I thought was their most clever way of convincing progressive women

Malcolm Collins: to

Simone Collins: want to have children. And I told you this when I just listened to that portion of the audio book they described this one, it sounded like a complete nightmare of a book about a, it seemed like partially or mostly trans polycule. And like their journey into motherhood and although maybe not motherhood, I think maybe there was an abortion in there. It just sounded like the ultimate progressive fiction book. But they described this one character who was a trans woman who desperately wanted to experience true motherhood and it really brought across the privilege that women experience in being able to be mothers.

And the fact that there are all these trans women who would [00:33:00] genuinely if you're a real trans woman, right? And like you just desperately want to be a woman, you desperately want to be a mother and you can't? You can just feel the entitlement, The, the spoiled rottenness of women in their ability to carry children and then just complain about it and be like, how dare you expect me to have children when there are people, both infertile women and like me, right?

And trans women who take the same amount of estrogen that I do, apparently. Who just desperately want to have children. And that was the one time reading this book where I was like, Oh s**t. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like that argument would work on progressives. That actually would work on progressives. And it's interesting.

Yeah. Like how

Simone Collins: dare trans women would die to be where you are. That was the most prenatalist argument in the entire book. So I thought that was very interesting. Wanted to point that out. I wrote, oh my god, these authors are overthinking themselves into abject misery. No wonder university educated women are not having kids.

Yeah, that's really how I fall through a lot of this. I think overthinking is a [00:34:00] central theme here. And especially in the literary analysis, there's these descriptions of either books describing, yeah, I think it's books describing this with feminist authors saying oh, when I, it was breastfeeding my child.

I like felt this my asthma of whatever. And there are just these women who are overthinking it so much and they clearly don't have anything else that they're doing. And this is why you shouldn't take maternity leave because you're just going to go completely crazy. And it just, it bothers me how much overthinking there is in this process.

And they also argue in the book, and this is a big thing that bothers me. about progressives and conversations around prenatalism is that girls are taught from a very young age. That motherhood is their destiny, and that we live in a pronatalist world, and that women are pressured to have children.

Because I, until I met you, and you talked with me about children, was antinatalist, I planned on never having children. And I was never shamed for that. I was never questioned for that. So they claim that [00:35:00] women are being shamed they claim, and I've seen this done before, by people who make antinatalist arguments.

That women that we live in this pro natalist world where they're shamed for being child free and they're ashamed for not having kids. But I was in their position. I never felt questioned. And actually I felt quite judged when I wanted to have kids, even by my own parents were

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you're going to be like, what are you guys doing?

Why are you having so many kids? No

Simone Collins: but at least my mother was like, Oh, Malcolm, you're going to be such a great. parent. And then she like turned to me and was like, she

Malcolm Collins: did. She's yeah, we have to one kid. Your mom was very clean. We're going to have one kid. Yeah. My mom began because your mom died before we had more than one kid.

But my mom started freaking out at two kids. She's you need to stop. You need to stop. Then she gave up though. She got Zen about it. No, she said four was the perfect number and we needed to stop at four.

Malcolm Collins: I know she's a fan of the show and everything like that. And the first fan of the show really who, who really was watching it [00:36:00] daily. But I don't think she could deal with the press we're getting these days. Emotionally, she wouldn't be able to deal with it and I would likely have to pull back or something like that.

Agents of Providence act as they act, right? We are able to move as far. As we can, and we actually saw that in her like notes after she died, that one of her dreams was that we got famous, but that couldn't happen in a world where we also weren't so attacked that you just can't be famous without being hated these days.

If you look at younger, celebrities that are up or anything through the ranks. And that's one of the problems with this progressive mindset is it is a desire to conform. At the same time as to have pride in who you are and what makes you different. And that's, especially where those things aren't from progressive culture, i.

e. the random things that turn you on. But, your cultural background, your family's background and [00:37:00] pride in anything that is not granular in the progressive world is sin, which is so interesting that you are allowed to be as prideful as you want about the random things that turn you on. But having pride in your culture or your religion or your ethnicity, those things are seen as sin.

It's core sins in progressivism and they must do that because all of those things represent alternate cultural frameworks that could compete with their own.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So anyway I came away from this book feeling pretty disheartened because I thought, okay, clearly we're not getting through to progressive groups in terms of making a strong prenatalist argument. Actually, you know what, I'm going to take that back. Progressives don't think we're getting through to them, but we are. Because I'm noticing, for example when we've gone viral twice in British publications, for whatever [00:38:00] reason Young Turks has done a segment on the piece that goes viral.

And the first time they went in on us to attack us, they're like. Wow, like these, monsters, they did not acknowledge demographic collapse as an issue. Second time, they're like obviously demographic collapse is an issue and pronatalism is important, but like these motherfuckers are doing it in a super evil, bad way.

Like they're terrible people. And I think the important thing is that we are raising awareness and we're getting a subset of progressives to be like, Oh yeah, it's an issue. And I hate these guys, but. I care about this and I'm going to do something about it. I actually think our advocacy is doing a good job.

I think doubling down on the reasons not to have kids, which is what this book does is quite as much as it speaks to the antinatalist sentiment of the progressive movement, it's not solving the problem. And as the other reviewers stated, it's not giving a real practical framework. Now I welcome [00:39:00] either or both of the authors to come on.

Thank you. And talk with us about this and give a defense for the book and perhaps because I'm too low IQ to actually catch the message that is inspiring when you read this book to have kids explain what I missed and dumb it down for

Malcolm Collins: what's the specific arguments. That's what we want to know.

Like dumb it down for me, a meditation on children and motherhood. And I actually think this is the core thing where progressives fail at this. is when they focus on children, they narcissistically focus on motherhood instead of focusing on humanity.

Simone Collins: Oh, and actually that is what, when when our friend told me about the book, that's what I thought it was going to be about because the way that she explained it to me was that it tries to take all the arguments that progressives are using for not having kids, such as the environment, such as negative utilitarianism.[00:40:00]

And just allow people to look at the inherent question of, should I have kids? But that's not what it ultimately was about. So either she had not yet read the book or

Malcolm Collins: that's what I assume.

Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe it had just come out. So I think she had an advanced copy. She literally had a physical hard copy with her

Malcolm Collins: anticipated that it would address those issues, but maybe but yeah, I, but I don't think that those issues are like, we address each of those in turn in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, which is our pronatalism book.

We have a section where we just go through every one of the progressive arguments, environmentalism, antinatalism, et cetera, and we give a logical counter to it. But the problem is that those are logical counters from first principle perspectives. Which do not register with progressives.

Simone Collins: I think, you could also argue it's a very masculine take, right?

So the approach that we take to problems is what the boyfriend does when he's not being a good boyfriend. When the girl comes to him and he's can you, she, or she says, I'm with you, this terrible thing happened to me at work. And can you believe what he said? And the boyfriend's [00:41:00] obviously what you should do is this here's how to solve the problem.

And then she gets mad because what he was supposed to say was, Oh my gosh, that's so horrible. You must feel terrible.

Malcolm Collins: This book is a feelings circle.

Simone Collins: I think that's what they're going for here is yes, it's so expensive and your career is hampered and you're going to be miserable. You

Malcolm Collins: are heard.

You are

Simone Collins: heard. Yes. And maybe, actually, you know what? I think we just figured it out. I think we just figured it out. That's what this book is doing. It is doing the good boyfriend. It is being the good boyfriend of Pronatalism. We are

Malcolm Collins: the bad boyfriend. We are the bad boyfriend. Shut up, b***h.

This is how you handle it. We gotta.

Simone Collins: We're like, no, don't worry. I'll fix it for you. We mansplain. Okay. We are mansplaining. And this book is listening and acknowledging and it, and the readers are heard. They're definitely heard. Like all of the progressive female concerns are aired ad nauseum in this and that's it.

That's it. [00:42:00] And but I think here's the problem. Here's the problem is mansplaining and problem solving is still the correct pathway and listening and saying, Oh, this is so terrible. You must feel so terrible. The boyfriend who does that is enabling a girlfriend to develop more neurosis. To not solve our problems, to establish learned helplessness.

That good boyfriend behavior is toxic and ultimately abusive.

Malcolm Collins: Simone, I love you to death. You are the best wife any man could hope for. It's true though, right? And tell me

Simone Collins: I'm wrong.

Malcolm Collins: No, you, but I'm the guy here. I, you're saying you're, you are so right that I've never even A scene, somebody as right as you, you are the pick me of the already chosen.

Simone Collins: I am the chosen. I am not a pick me. I

Malcolm Collins: am chosen. I'm not a pick me. I am the chosen. Oh, that'd be great if there's a new group of women who call themselves the chosen instead of pick me. Oh my god, yes! You're like, I've already been chosen. I already have the kids. [00:43:00] Yeah. I've won this game. I'm in the post game.

Yeah. Love you to death..

Simone Collins: Would you mind getting the kids?

And then locking the fence, and then I'll make dinner while they play outside?

Malcolm Collins: Will do.

Simone Collins: Thank you. Alright, little one. Let's get you changed and get your dinner. Din. You're awake now. You're awake now. Okay. Okay.

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