To sceptics, pronatalism’s appeal in Silicon Valley may simply look like the latest messianic project for a community already convinced that they are the best people to colonise space, conquer death and fix the world’s problems. You do not need to fear dysgenic doom to feel that something is fundamentally broken about the way we have and raise children – as many recent or aspiring parents are already aware.

‘In almost every low-fertility country, no one is able to have the number of children they want to have. Even in South Korea, people still want to have two children; they don’t want to have 0.8,’ says Kuang. But far from being an inevitable consequence of progress, she contends that it stems from specific choices we force on to families.

‘The first half of the gender revolution was women attaining educational attainment at parity with men, entering the workforce at parity with men,’ she continues. But the second half remains unfinished, leaving many women caught between mutually incompatible expectations at work versus at home – the classic ‘have it all’ problem. ‘Wow, you wonder why women aren’t rushing to sign up for that kind of life?’ laughs Kuang.

Lyman Stone, a natalist demographer and research fellow at the US’s Institute for Family Studies, has described the Collinses’ philosophy as ‘a very unusual subculture’ compared to millions of everyday natalists

Partly of the problem is that middle-class parents are now expected to micromanage their children’s upbringings more intensely than ever before. (altro…)