We told you earlier this week that, among the proposals submitted to the Trump administration on how to encourage people to have more kids, an infamous Pennsylvania couple suggested handing out Nazi-like medals to moms who have six children. That idea came from pronatalists Simone and Malcolm Collins, who are expecting their fifth child, have ties to technofascist Peter Thiel, and envision a future with “mass production of genetically selected humans” via IVF.
On Thursday, CNN interviewed the couple about the New York Times story that first surfaced their proposal, and they said several more insane things, including their take on paid family leave, and who they really believe should be reproducing.
Host Pamela Brown pointed out that other countries have given out similar medals, including Hungary, Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union, and, yes, Nazi Germany, where they were part of a campaign to promote selective breeding. Brown asked, “Does it matter to you all who has more babies in America, or is this a universal thing for you?” (This question begins at the 6:30 mark.) Malcolm responded, “Not in a huge way” and then claimed it was “very misogynistic” for countries to give medals for scientists, warriors, and economists, but not the one kind of “greatness that is relegated to women.” Of course, women are also scientists, warriors, and economists.
Brown rightly followed up to note that, at a recent pronatalist conference, some speakers said they only wanted people with certain political beliefs to have more children and asked again if they support “anyone in America” having more babies. Malcolm said the question was “nuanced” and that he “would promote fertility rates more in groups that are on the verge of extinction or have very low fertility rates,” like Native Americans. He does not mention that the U.S. government forcibly sterilized indigenous people as recently as the 1970s and 1980s as part of a long campaign of cultural genocide.
But this framing of concern over fertility rates among specific groups should raise alarm bells—and Malcolm couldn’t help but say the quiet part out loud. He continued, and brought up the concept of $5,000 “baby bonuses,” which was also proposed in the NYT story:
We have to keep in mind that the economic tragedy that is downstream of falling fertility rates isn’t downstream of the number of people—it is downstream of the number of taxpayers. It’s that systems start breaking when, you know, right now, for every 1.8 people paying into the American tax system, there’s one person living off of that. And when you get to around that 1.5 number, things start breaking.
And so you have to say, ‘Oh, well, then, you know, if you give sort of blanket payments, for example, those blanket payments are going to be much more valuable to people who have less money and thus are paying less money into the tax system, and might actually cause more of a drain on tax system.’ You know, as we’ve seen in studies, people who are on welfare, have kids at three times the rate of people who aren’t on welfare…And it would be great if we could figure out equality as a country, if we could figure out a way to get everyone, no matter who they are, get to an equal level of economic prosperity. But we haven’t figured that out.
Malcolm is saying he opposes universal payments to low-income people who have children because they are already “a drain on the tax system.” While he believes that the U.S. needs many more people having babies, he is essentially saying he only wants incentives to go to people who pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits. This is an incredibly racist and even eugenic sentiment, because it’s predicated on the idea that people’s worth to society is based on the amount of taxes they pay, and that all children of low-income people will themselves be low-income. By the way, the motherhood medals in Nazi Germany only went to “Aryan” and “genetically healthy” couples, and Jewish people could not receive them.
Now let’s get to Simone! She at least agreed that $5,000 wasn’t enough to move the needle for people considering children, when what they need is to be more financially sound overall and have optimism about the future. So, Brewer asked, does she support more generous paid parental leave? Nope!
“I don’t actually, because it has a lot of adverse effects that are not accounted for. It can even cause organizations to discriminate against hiring women because they know that they have to pay for generous parental leave, and then be made more, subconsciously, likely to promote and select men or women who don’t plan on having any kids at all, which would ultimately put parents at more of a disadvantage,” Simone said. “The biggest thing in workplace, I think, is allowing for more generous work from home policies, which really allow families to both have kids and work really easily without having to choose one path.”
I agree on working from home, but her answer is very stupid if you consider that the federal government could be paying for this parental leave (the U.S. has zero guaranteed time off, unlike most other wealthy nations), so the cost wouldn’t be on employers.
It’s interesting that both she and her husband are trying to frame their ideas as fighting discrimination against women without suggesting anything that might actually impact their decision to have children, or more of them. But let’s just bookmark Malcolm’s answer on who he believes should—or should not—be procreating and revisit this post in a year…
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
