The Pro-Natalist Paradoxes

Two types of people are very worried about global fertility — social conservatives and Silicon Valley weirdos. I have the rare privilege of having been both at one point in my life, neither at the same time, and, how apropos, I also have training in bioethics. This is my moment.

Pro-natalists want more babies. They argue that total fertility rates being below replacement level is really bad. They’re very probably right. Unfortunately, the conservatives and weirdos not only almost perfectly oppose and cancel out each other, but are also tying their own rhetorical shoelaces together.

The problem of low fertility is a combination of social and technological barriers. Social conservatives tend to want social solutions and oppose technological ones. The Silicon Valley weirdos tend to want the technological solutions and oppose the social options. Combined, both groups end up failing to convince each other and skeptical normies. Who needs anti-natalists when you’ve got pro-natalists like these?

As a result most normal people think the solution fertility problem is obvious. They are wrong. If you think it’s obvious, read Dr. Alice Evan’s interview with Ross Douthat, her blog on Substack, or these threads by @StatisticUrban.

(Probable) Root Causes of the Fertility Crisis

I’m going to attempt to do this without too much bias but let me state my leanings up front:

I agree with pro-natalists that global fertility is a problem the same way climate change, AI x-risk, and social decay are a problem. If you think one of these matters, you should probably take the others seriously as well.
I buy into optimistic technological determinism in the sense that I think technology actually unlocks more moral options. I don’t think technology is inherently good and often comes with downsides, but on net tends to help.
I lean more virtue ethicist than Kantian or utilitarian, and am sympathetic to moral particularism, which means I’m inclined to think social norms, traditions, and institutions matter a lot.

With that settled, let’s assess the few major plausible ‘root causes’ of the fertility crisis. Because having kids is rarely a ‘rational’ choice, I’m going to express these as what a person might say.

“I want to but can’t” Your individual life circumstances stop you — you don’t have a partner, and your partner don’t align (timing, desire) or you and your partner are biologically unable (and can’t afford to override that).
“Having kids seems like it’s not worth it” You believe having kids means a loss of status, comfort, and freedom. You’re often judged, your friend groups change, you move. Being pregnant and giving birth can be unpleasant and/or scary. Kids are difficult, messy, and expensive.
“I cannot bear the thought of it going wrong” You’re afraid: of being a terrible parent (abusive, absent), of having an unfortunate child (sickly, simple, evil), or being of abandoned with the burden (divorce, no family).
“I don’t think anyone should.” You believe the global situation is too crappy (climate, politics, economy, technology) to morally bring children in to the world.
“I’m sorry, what? I was looking at my phone. Oh, no. I don’t want to go to the bar, I’m gonna stay in tonight.” You have instant and constant access to hyper-entertainment: gaming, gambling, net culture, porn, endless-scroll social media, and near infinite shows and movies. Dating, relationships, and sex are not a priority. It’s easier to just scroll.

I’m not advocating for any of these positions, I’m just stating the irrational reasons people might avoid having kids.

Dr. Alice Evans makes the convincing case that the internet and phones are the true root cause. Both types of pro-natalists (e.g. Noah Smith and Ross Douthat) have lauded her work. Her core argument is that tech is the only consistent change across nearly every country, which would explain why birth rates are dropping independent of a country’s social norms, social services, political stability and economic equality.

To really overstate this: that Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sweden, and India all have collapsing birth rates should make you seriously question any theory you have not based on internet and phones. Go ahead, pick your favorite country and plug it into Our World In Data. Evans convincingly argues the modern tech has atomized us in ways that undermine family creation.

Babies Make for Strange Bedfellows

Conservatives in the 90s and 2000s railed against teen pregnancy and were squeamish about even acknowledging sex (think Mike Pence). It was hammered home that kids came after a strong career, a marriage, and a house. You needed to be stable and ready.

Modern social conservatives like Liz Wolfe and Ross Douthat have reversed course. Wolfe argues that a family and children are “Not a capstone to adulthood, but foundational to it.” Douthat, a conservative Catholic, read a poem on his podcast about the beauty of sex (!) where the parents have sex loud enough (!!) to wake up their kid (!!!) who then sweetly joins them in bed (!!!!). Imagine Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity’s apoplexy had Gwyneth Paltrow had read the same poem in 2008.

Wolfe and Douthat are thoughtful, worthy representatives of the social conservative pro-natalist positions. They also engage in good faith, spirited debates, as demonstrated by their interactions with Noor Siddiqui, founder and CEO of Orchid Health. Douthat interviewed Siddiqui and Wolfe reacted on Twitter, initiating a back-and-forth.

Siddiqui, as well as writers like Noah Smith and tycoons like Elon Musk, represent the Silicon Valley weirdos. Siddiqui’s company, Orchid Health, does genetic testing to improve embryo selection as part of IVF. Siddiqui (a Thiel Fellow, not exactly a leftist) sees Orchid as making it much easier for parents to have a healthy baby. Siddiqui explained how her technology works, why it is safe, and why it is a tool to increase choice.

Both Douthat and Wolfe find Siddiqui’s views and Orchid Health’s product repellant. Douthat is measured in his interview, but his discomfort is clear. During the podcast, Douthat first brought up worries about safety, efficacy, high cost, and discrimination. Given these are more left-coded, it felt more like probing for weaknesses rather than real concerns. Wolfe, more intense and polemic, more clearly articulated the true fears she and Douthat share:

It’s immoral: it makes kids products.

Wolfe: “The rise of child-optimization––a gross concept in the first place, a perversion of the unconditional love that should extend from parent to child––at ever earlier stages ($2,500 a pop; $12,500 for 5 embryos) will not lead to a better birth rate or healthier parenting culture”

This is a version of Michael Sandel’s argument about ‘giftedness’ and opposition to parental hyperagency. Wolfe and Douthat see this as having religious valance, but even atheists are weirded out by the claim “IVF allows for genetic optimization, so most babies should be born via IVF.” Little intuition alarm bells go off.

In short: Children are gifts, not commodities!
If it is moral, you’ll make us do it.

Wolfe: “The implication here is that there’s some sort of dereliction of duty, that it’s bad parenting not to avail yourself of this technology, to instead choose to love your child unconditionally regardless of their ability, to steward them through hardship.”

When society decides something is good, it shifts from optional, to social moral pressure, to legal requirements. We all just lived through a pandemic where this behavior (and its myriad unintended consequences) was on vivid display. To make Wolfe’s case stronger, there is already a philosophical concept, Procreative Beneficence, says we have a moral obligation to use technologies like Orchid Health.

In short: If we think something is good, we will pressure people to create their families out of line with their values!

These are both great arguments against Orchid and Siddiqui. They deserve to be taken seriously and addressed by Silicon Valley weirdos like me. I agree that we should be extremely cautious about 1) treating children like an economic commodity and 2) about telling people how to build a family, even if just by social norms.

Unfortunately, these are both excellent arguments against nearly every single social conservative social solution to the fertility crisis and are awesome defenses for Silicon Valley weirdo social solutions.

Douthat and Wolfe are explicit that a core danger of the fertility crisis is economic crisis. Yes,, they are worried about the collapse of family structures or the hollowing out of culture, yes, but they know that’s not the big tent argument. We all have an incentive for the economy not to collapse.

Talking to Wolfe, Douthat says, “We aren’t talking about a gentle slide from above-replacement fertility into slightly below … You’re talking about cities being empty, buildings standing empty, economies grinding to a halt.”

Suddenly it’s not about the numinous link between the love of two people and the self-less creation of new life, no no, it’s “Breed for GDP, you fools!”

If we shouldn’t treat kids like commodities at the family level, that’s also true at the national and global scale. As for the ‘not pressuring’ people, in a separate interview with Ezra Klein, Douthat argues the advantage the right has against the left is a ‘vision of the good life’, which is basically the traditional nuclear family with 3+ kids. How do Wolfe and Douthat think we should encourage that vision? With propaganda like movies that elevate parenthood, family life, and child rearing. Douthat is also explicit he thinks religion is a necessary component. Sounds like he might have some moral about how to build your family he would like to impose with social pressure. Uh oh!

Have bigger families. Wait, No! Not like that!

What social conservatives very much do not want is for someone to have a bunch of kids in some kind of weird post-modern family structures using a bunch of tech. They imagine some freakish liberal in a deconstructed family, farming out child rearing, totally alienated from the kids and the mothers, embracing tech at every turn and wantonly procreating. Someone like, say, Elon Musk.

For social conservatives like Douthat and Wolfe, Musk is a Worst Case Scenario. He has at least fourteen kids. He defaults to technology — many (unclear if most) of Musk’s kids were born via IVF or surrogate. It is plausible that some were embryos selected using Orchid or something similar (of course, we don’t actually know). These children were born across five women, some of whom Musk married, others not. His ongoing relationships with them are mixed at best. Musk is open about drug use and basks in the milieu of proponents of life extension, artificial wombs, and AI companions. A social conservative pro-natalist he is not.

Musk is the Silicon Valley pro-natalist weirdo. Not, as some might argue, the Collinses. Musk is utterly uninterested in any social pro-natal solutions that resemble anything like what Douthat or Wolfe might want — no nuclear family, maximum technological intervention, zero sense that children are gifts.

Now, for all you liberals and self-identified Silicon Valley weirdos reading with a smug bit of schadenfreude, realize that he is the avatar of our pro-natal positions. That’s right, if you don’t like social conservative ideas and are worried about total fertility, Musk is your current best role model.

We are stuck with someone we find as repellant as the social conservatives do. And that should tell us something.

Siddiqui did a phenomenal job handling Douthat’s questions, but she seemed almost baffled by his fears and discomfort. The thing is most people are conservative by default. I don’t mean they have nostalgia brainworms like the right. I mean it’s hardwired into us: we all have Status Quo Bias. New things are scary, new tech yes, but new norms especially. In not taking social conservatives seriously, we leave the door open for every discussion of reproductive tech to lead to the average person imagining a Brave New World-ish future.

But the Silicon Valley weirdo problem isn’t just that Musk is their avatar. It’s that their entire worldview makes having children irrational. If everything should be optimized, children are objectively a terrible investment: they’re expensive, time-consuming, emotionally draining, with uncertain ROI. They ruin your sleep — no immortality for you! The logical endpoint of Silicon Valley thinking isn’t Musk’s 14 kids. It’s Bryan Johnson with his perfect sleep scores, optimized biomarkers, and zero children. The most ‘rational’ Silicon Valley weirdo isn’t reproducing at all.

Compromising Our Way Out of Crisis

So here’s where we are:

Conservatives argue children aren’t commodities while commodifying them as GDP units
They hand wring about social pressure to use tech while musing about pro-family propaganda
Silicon Valley argues for rational optimization antithetical to irrational reproduction
They dismiss traditional meaning while offering no alternative reason to have kids

The fertility crisis isn’t unsolvable because we lack solutions. It’s unsolvable because the two groups who care most about solving it prevent each other — and themselves — from succeeding. Maybe the solution isn’t choosing sides but embracing contradiction. There is precedent! Orthodox Jewish communities have used genetic testing since the 80s to prevent unhealthy children from being born. That community has not started treating its kids like widgets. What ever you think of him Sam Altman is a rare Silicon Valley weirdo who is unabashedly public about how he is irrationally happy about his young child.

Conservatives can embrace tech without losing their souls. Weirdos can embrace family without losing their edge.

The conservatives are right that children need and create meaning, community, and love. The Silicon Valley weirdos are right that technology can reduce suffering and expand possibilities. The tragedy is that each side would rather win the argument than solve the problem.

Testing Trade Offs

To me, one of the best tests of intellectual honesty is answering the question, “what evidence or circumstances would change your mind?” Thus, I offer two tests.

For social conservatives: if radical reproductive tech (say PGT + artificial wombs) was proven to be the MOST potent way 0-2 child couples would have 3+ children, would you approve and support it?

For Silicon Valley weirdos: if big nuclear families (2 parents, 3+ kids) were proven to be the MOST optimal environment for any child, would you approve and support them?

These tests aren’t perfect, but the question boils down to: if you had to accept your opponents position was a required part of the solution, would you compromise your localized belief to solve the global problem?

Let’s hope we find the answer soon. Future generations will be literally shaped by it.