The Importance of Fathers and a Fertility Policy

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into France's recent policy proposals aimed at combating the country's falling fertility rates. They analyze President Emmanuel Macron's plan, which includes offering fertility checks for young people, implementing a "birth leave" scheme, and introducing a possible "duty to visit" for fathers in single-parent families. Malcolm and Simone discuss the potential impact of these policies, highlighting the ineffectiveness of fertility checks in encouraging parenthood and the unintended consequences of mandating father involvement. They also touch on the importance of equitable divorce laws, the myth of the two-parent household, and the role of cultural factors in shaping fertility outcomes. Throughout the conversation, the couple emphasizes the need for policymakers to focus on fostering a culture that values family formation and pronatalism, rather than implementing misguided policies that may exacerbate the problem.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Malcolm and Simone here and we are happy to be talking about some pronatalist and policy today. Today's episode is going to be focused on France's recent policy proposals to combat demographic collapse. However, I have not seen them.

So Simone is going to be presenting them to me, and you are going to be getting my in real time reaction.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Yeah, so I recently came across this telegraph article was published, I think, a little earlier this month, but it's about policies that have been discussed for a while. It's called France to offer young people, fertility tax to combat falling fertility rates.

And it discusses a couple of policies, which at best. Not going to do anything at worst are probably going to cause damage at least unless I'm crazy. I want your take on this so the gist is that France's president Emmanuel [00:01:00] Macron is laudable for recognizing demographic collapse as an issue and talking about it France's fertility rate relative to the rest of the EU is actually pretty good.

Malcolm Collins: It, but it had a massive collapse this last year. It did. 70 percent year over year.

Simone Collins: They're still above the EU average. They're still above the UK. They're still above Germany and they're still above Spain. So like generally speaking, France is, the one that looks good maybe because it's a little more Catholic.

Who knows? There's a lot. No. It's because it's less Catholic. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: really? Yeah. If you contrast it with other countries, it's actually more secular. And again, this is what we've seen across a lot of things is that the more Catholic a country is in Europe, the lower its fertility rate was the average Catholic majority country in Europe having a fertility rate of only 1.

3.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But that makes sense then. But anyway they still recognize it's a problem. I really appreciate that. So they get points for that. All right. Petty points for that. But the latest thing that Emmanuel Macron. Prince's president has proposed is fertility checks for young people. He's trying to [00:02:00] get people to test their fertility earlier.

But quite honestly, doing so isn't going to boost fertility.

Malcolm Collins: It sounds like an interesting idea from the

Simone Collins: article. I'll read what they say. Emmanuel Macron is. To offer fertility checks to all 18 to 25 year olds as part of a grand plan to combat declining fertility rates, the French president first announced his ambition to enact French demographic rearmament, which that's fun.

That's a fun term. At a press conference on January 16th, as part of a wide array of measures aimed at reviving his stuttering second term. I don't think that's going to help and I can tell you why, but I want to hear why you think that's interesting and worth trying.

Malcolm Collins: So what age ranges 18 to 25?

Why wouldn't this? It's a great idea actually. So it's very similar to me, to the policy where conservatives to fight abortion, they made it so that women had to [00:03:00] look at a picture of their ultrasound before getting an abortion which dramatically lowers the chance of abortion. They are creating a policy, which is.

encouraging people to recognize their short fertility windows, which is one of the core issues in society today in terms of falling fertility rates, is men do not realize they have fertility windows. They think that because some men occasionally have kids when they're older, that it is normal for the male fertility window to expand.

And well past 40 and it just is not you might occasionally get that, you're going to have a really high rates of diseases and stuff like that. And you're going to have it's just not great. So that's one huge thing that hopefully it can help clear up that myth and force people to understand that myth.

And what

Simone Collins: McCrone recognizes and mentioned in a magazine interview is quote, every woman should have access, should have free access to her body. But one figure stands out for me. The [00:04:00] fertility rate is 1. 8 and the rate of desire for a child is 2. 3. Now that's a good point, right? So there are more, there are women in France who want to, on average, have more kids than they have.

And so it recognizes that people are having fertility problems or that they're not starting when they should. And maybe one, one thing you can enact to change that is to inform them about their fertility. Again, I just. Here's why it's

Malcolm Collins: not informing them about their fertility. You're reading what's happening wrong.

Okay. It's forcing them to take a reality check on their fertility window through the most realistic mechanism available to them. Through just hard data. Women often don't realize how short their fertility window is. Yeah. After 35, if a woman gets pregnant, that's considered a geriatric pregnancy. That is considered an extremely old age pregnancy and likely to lead to complications.

A lot of women don't know the window is 35. They're like, Oh maybe by the time I'm 40 and I'll start thinking about it in my mid thirties. No, if you start thinking about it in your mid thirties, you are [00:05:00] not going to have many kids. You've already lost. You need to be getting married and starting having kids.

In your late twenties, not mid thirties. Okay. So that's another thing. But again,

Simone Collins: here's why I don't think it's going to work. Okay. As much as everyone's we just should inform people. We just need to let them know that their fertility window is short. I don't honestly think that the problem is that people are being unrealistic about their short fertility windows.

I think that many people. Who want to have kids are aware. So basically the people who already want to have kids and plan on having kids know that their fertility window is short and they're struggling to find partners and they're struggling to get their careers in orders and they're still going to wait to have kids because they feel like

Malcolm Collins: literally seen this even among fans of this show.

When we've talked about is males who are under the illusion that their fertility, they're going to be like able to have kids. It's one

Simone Collins: factor. I don't think it's the factor. I think it's one factor, but It's definitely not the defining factor.

Malcolm Collins: It's just, no, it's not the [00:06:00] defining factor, but it is an inexpensive, like if I was going to put the weight anywhere policy wise, this is one of the easiest areas to do this outside of changing education.

Here's the problem with changing education. You could try to do better education around people's fertility windows. It's just that if you put that into schools or colleges, it is going to be administered by bureaucrats who are usually anti natalist because they're usually far left leaning. Or at least anti French, French national natalist.

And so I just I'm sorry, like it's actually a fairly good policy for the cost.

Simone Collins: I hold it as neutral. I don't think it's going to help because I think that the really big factors are culture that people just don't want to have kids or they don't feel like they're ready to have kids yet. And they're still gonna ultimately start trying or feel like they're finally ready when it's too late.

So what's

Malcolm Collins: the next one? Yeah. So the

Simone Collins: next thing that bothers me is okay. I'm going to read from the article again. Mr. [00:07:00] McCrone also outlined his future birth leave scheme, which will quote, come to force at the end of 2025 unquote, the aim is to pay young parents who stopped working or reduce their working hours to look after their offspring, quote, three months for mothers.

three months for fathers, cumulative during the child's first year and compensated at 50 percent of salary up to the social security ceiling, which is 1, 900 euros, unquote, he said. Now, again, I really think that this is damaging things that are like we'll just pay you to put your career on hold.

This is, many places that have very permissive. maternity leave policies are still seeing their birth rates plummet because women are realistic. And they understand that basically you're damned. If you do, you're damned. If you don't, if there's no maternity leave, it's hard to have kids. And if there is maternity leave, you can have kids and you can get support, but there are going to then be more glass ceilings in your career because people know that you're more of a liability.

And there [00:08:00] are also going to be major career costs because you're just going to disappear for a while and that's going to put your career on hold no matter what the nation may try to do to protect you.

Malcolm Collins: So to clarify, this is mandatory maternity leave. It's not

Simone Collins: mandatory. It's just basically ensuring that women are compensated.

Both women and men are compensated when taking parental leave.

Malcolm Collins: And does it compensate both genders equally?

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And it's something like 80 percent of their salary, right? For a year.

Simone Collins: At 50 percent of salary and it's just for three months. Okay. I, is he, this is three months for mothers, three months for fathers.

So it's a total of six months. Like the father can take three months off. The mother can take three months off. So it's basically saying you can take time off. The government will pay you half of your salary. So that should make it easier for you. Again, I don't think that's going to make a difference.

Malcolm Collins: It's going to increase gender pay gap. I mean anything around maternity leave as a concept. We're just against you need to build a cultural practices around [00:09:00] having children at work. This is gender neutral.

Simone Collins: So men can do it too. It's just I don't think men are going to do it.

Malcolm Collins: No, but it's much more important to create laws that like you cannot. Have a woman not come to work with her newborn that, that needs to just be a legal mandate, something that is normal for women to be wearing their children all the time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If we could just change the norms to bring your baby to the office, we'll help to provide some support or at least have an inclusive environment where it's cool to do that.

Malcolm Collins: And then you want to really help things. It would be an interesting policy take, bring your baby to the office, 50 percent of your salary gets paid as a bonus to the company for every mother during her first few months.

Simone Collins: Like the company gets a subsidy for having a slightly less productive and more disruptive mother, but like for supporting her, so now the company is financially

Malcolm Collins: incentivized for its employees to get pregnant. That's great. Good. I like that device for its employees getting pregnant. I like that. And you create many downstream positive practices from that outside of maternity leave, which [00:10:00] I think builds up this false fear of having the kid is such a burden, everything like that.

And then people can spiral around that when historically, women worked and had kids at the same time you, you have with all of our kids. It's Yeah, I just don't like that expectation, but I wouldn't say it's a disastrous plan. No, again, that's neutral.

Simone Collins: There are two things that I think are quite negative.

So let's get to the first one, which isn't easy. Which is a very easy one to hate, which is that he is strongly against surrogacy. He says that it is quote, not compatible with the dignity of women. It is a form of commodification of their bodies, unquote, he argued, which is just it's very annoying because on the other hand, he's argued that he doesn't want pronatalism in France to be about shaming or guilting people who don't want to have kids into having kids.

He's very much about supporting those who want to have kids. And this is one of the top ways surrogacy is one of the top ways you can support people who want to have kids, but can't. I feel like getting over [00:11:00] surrogacy is one of the most important things when it comes to encouraging a nation to be able to have more kids.

It's even a great way for people who don't want to have kids of their own to contribute to a nation's pronatalism while also making money. Because a lot of people don't mind commodifying their bodies, which is shown by the rate of women who are on OnlyFans now. Hello?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, you have something like OnlyFans legal where women are literally, and it's my understanding OnlyFans is illegal in France and pornography is legal in France, which means he's literally okay with women literally commodifying their bodies for base level human debasement, right?

And

Simone Collins: actually for probably more antinatalists. Tendencies, right? Because men are using OnlyFans as a Band Aid in places. But,

Malcolm Collins: creating a human life that another family is going to love, and raise, and take care of and that is You know, just the perversion of that sentiment. [00:12:00] I think it's really good that he doesn't want to do something like he's trying to appease the, extremists, conservatives, who are It's not

Simone Collins: working.

His approval ratings are dropping. He's not doing well at all. I don't know. Just, it really, that bothers me. But here's the really stupid thing. And I actually I think it's stupid. I want to get your take on this. Because of what you've said regarding child support required by men and its effect on fertility.

So here is a very interesting, and I've not heard any other leader established this as a pronatalist policy, but I think that if he does really push for this, it's going to backfire like crazy. And this is very novel. So get this reading the article again. Mr. Macron also outlined his future birth leave scheme, which will, oh, okay. So I'm quoting from the article again in a video broadcast by Elle, the magazine, Mr. Macron, who has no children, although his wife Bridgette has three from her first marriage, also suggested opening a [00:13:00] debate on the introduction of a possible duty to visit. for fathers in single parent families where women are the main carers.

Quote, we've allowed men to exonerate themselves from all parental duties, he said, while pointing out that 90 percent of youths involved in riots in France last July, quote, came from either child welfare or single parent families. Mr. Macron added, when there is a father, he must exercise all his duties, and the mother, when she is in that situation, must be able to demand regular visits.

He said fathers should, for example, take part in parent teacher meetings and be a, quote, stakeholder, unquote, in a child's education. The president stressed, it is a duty to be a parent, and it's a duty that doesn't end with a divorce or separation, and said parents must, quote, both exercise their responsibilities, unquote.

He added, Even for the child, it is better a child who never sees his father is a child who feels abandoned, unquote, and whose, quote, emotional and educational development is not the [00:14:00] same, unquote. Now I agree, children do better with two parents, totally, but Actually, I don't think the

Malcolm Collins: evidence is as strong for that as people like to say it is.

So I'll give you the factors that's here that people, hold on. So if you're looking gender blind. Children do better with two parents. Oh, when you look at

Simone Collins: single father households,

Malcolm Collins: they do about the same. They do in two parent households. So what's unique about single father households, right? It's that most single father households are not single father households because a relationship.

So let me explain what I mean by that because people may not be familiar with the court system. The court system hugely is favorable to women Women can usually get the kids that they want. So what that means is if you have a single father household, it's usually because the wife died. And so The wife is wildly

Simone Collins: incompetent and evil and messed

Malcolm Collins: up.

[00:15:00] Yeah. And in that case, a divorce was warranted. So it's not a The kids are better off in that case. Yeah. Yeah. Messed up. If So I don't think that is a condemnation of women as single parents. I just think what it shows is that a lot of these single parent women are people who are fundamentally unfit to be parents or be in a long term relationship with another human.

Simone Collins: And the lesser evil, like the husbands too are probably unfit, but whatever. No,

Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't say necessarily. I think if you created more equitable divorce laws and more equitable laws around child custody, that would have a better impact in terms of getting more fathers involved in their children's lives than forcing.

But think about what you're forcing here. So one, you're forcing a father into a kid's life who not like he's forcing the fathers to care about the kids. He's forcing fathers who don't care about the kids into kids locks That is not there is no evidence that is a helpful thing to do or that's going to [00:16:00] fix some sort of Emotional problems that kid have around being abandoned that the kids only had their father around because he was legally obligated to be around

Simone Collins: Yeah I feel like it also adds baggage.

It's just another one of those liability things that affects the male subconscious and deciding whether or whether at all to engage with women. So along with all these other laws around consent and post hoc deciding that, Someone didn't consent to some kind of liaison with a man. This is just another one of those things that I think men would think about Oh, and then the government's going to, for my entire life, not only demand child support, but also demand that I travel across the entire country just to show up to parent teacher conferences.

If I move like this is going to ruin my life even more than I thought it ever was. So I'm just going to get a vasectomy right now and never, ever have kids, that kind of thing. I just, that's what I worry about.

Malcolm Collins: No, that's obviously what's going to happen. I see almost no positive outcome for this other than that.

It [00:17:00] may give some men more leverage in getting access to their children.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

That'd be a good thing, but that's, I think that they were probably, this seemed like the kind of law that would have some exception clause where if the woman really hated the man, Or something that like, she would still be able to cut him out somehow.

So

Malcolm Collins: it seems like it's just giving the wives more control when you would achieve much more by creating more equitable divorces and getting kids to fathers more when the father is competent. And I also think that this again goes to, I think the myth of the two parent household. When you look at the data, like the data I'm talking about, I just.

I think it shows that actually what you're seeing is the type of person who cannot maintain a stable relationship is the type of person who is a bad parent. And at that point, it's oh yeah, no, duh, like anyone should know that. And they have the type of kid who causes more social damage and more social harm.

And I [00:18:00] think that actually is a pretty chilling statistic about the riots and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, and how do you even get that information? I don't are they polling everyone who shows up to a riot? They're breaking a window and they're like sir, did you have a single parent? I

Malcolm Collins: suspect that if you were to look into this data more, it's covering up something that is what's the word I'm looking for here?

Inconvenient truth that the dominant cultural group doesn't want to admit that the urban monoculture doesn't want to admit which is that most of the writers were from an ethnic or cultural group that has very low rates of fathers staying around. That is, I think what he is actually stating there.

Not that they're just broadly. So I think that's important to note is cultural groups which do not encourage fathers, I think, have worse outcomes and cultural groups that do encourage fathers or broadly because they're just you've got to [00:19:00] look at all the things that, that then gets elevated within those cultural groups.

A person isn't rewarded for staying around their kids. They're often not rewarded as much for treating women well. And you're much more likely to get really high power distance between husband and wife, which leads to abusive situations for the wife. Even when the husband does stay around, you're also likely to have wives really heavily optimizing around just base masculinity.

And again, Instead of, is this person going to be a good caregiver because they are not searching for biologically speaking, they are not searching for a long term partner. They're searching for genes. And so when women are doing that, they cultural groups often end up, um, elevating within them traits that are like wealth, physical strengths risk taking behavior, i.

e. crime. And a lot of just generally negative traits become [00:20:00] high status within those cultural groups. I and this is definitely something that needs to be fixed. I just don't see this is fixing it. I think with a lot of this, it's something that comes from within the cultural group. Fixing it comes from within the cultural groups, members within the cultural groups, which choose a different pathway, but they're empowering

Simone Collins: those cultural groups to fix their own ways is brilliant.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: which involves less, school overreach, school, cultural overreach and stuff like that, because, the urban monoculture is interested in no kids. Like they, they don't want any kids at all. It's just do whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it.

Simone Collins: But that's again, why I don't think this practice of informing people of their fertility window is really going to make that much of a difference because listen, if I was informed of my fertility window in between the age of 18 and 25, which is, I met you at age 24.

I'd be like, great. Yep. I never want to have kids. So this doesn't matter. I'm not going to get it.

Malcolm Collins: It's something that comes at a certain point in your life. I think [00:21:00] a more fun way to do this or something is all women, when they graduate school and all men get a clock that's counting down their fertility window and they get to put it in their house, wherever they want biological clock, not thinking about it.

Here's the thing. Now. Many progressives as a joke would display this because they'd be like, Oh, but it would still remind all of their guests and them every day because there's that moment in your life where it goes, your fertility window goes from being a joke to an existential crisis and being reminded of it.

I think makes that day happen earlier. Oh, I don't know. Just

Simone Collins: when I think of progressive Simone, nah, really not at all. Not at all. And that's the thing is again, like I can model this so well because I was this and the only thing for me that changed my interest in fertility was meeting. You

Malcolm Collins: was

Simone Collins: finding a guy that [00:22:00] was

Malcolm Collins: it.

Simone Collins: And if he invested, if Macron invested in dating and relationship formation in, in creating a culture that elevates the family, I feel like that would make so much more of a difference than telling people about their fertility window. You know what I mean? It just, people don't give a s**t. The best of the policies that he

Malcolm Collins: has.

I will say that the policies are honestly bizarre that he thinks this would have a positive impact. It appears almost more like subsidies or trying to, what's the word I'm looking for? Placate special interest groups or it was in society. Then Actually trying to come up with a real solution to fertility class.

Simone Collins: And even, I don't know if you saw in South Korea, they're considering giving a approximately 52, 000 subsidy to parents for each kid, which is that's unprecedented. And this is, along the lines of what Robin Hanson has Suggested in terms of upfront payments, right? [00:23:00] Even that though, when it comes to culture in Korea being what it is and the amount of helplessness plus the animosity between men and women.

I don't think it's going to solve the problem. It's no, one's listening to people when they're saying what's wrong. No, one's listening to women saying this isn't working for me. No, one's listening to men when they're like, I can't find a woman, like this everyone's talking about

Malcolm Collins: when a man says I can't find a woman, they're like then you must be an incel.

And when women are like the gender dynamics in this country. They're like you must be a toxic feminist, right? And I think that it's because people like to elevate the extremists was in both of those movements. Instead of point out that both groups do have genuine grievances, they do.

The thing is I just don't care because all of this can be fixed with culture. Yes, but why are policymakers not

Simone Collins: doing that? It's so obvious that [00:24:00] culture is the answer.

Malcolm Collins: I guess what I'm saying here is you're not getting in cell ultra Orthodox Jews, you, you might have some fertility problems with this community.

You're not getting in cell Amish men. Okay. You might own the fringes, but not more than you would historically really and I think that, and you're not getting people within these communities being like, Oh, it's. So toxic the masculinity or from, whatever they may leave the movement and then complain about that because now they're in a completely different cultural cup set where the urban monoculture really likes to elevate people's beef with their birth culture because that's how it prevents them from reconverting.

Cults always do this. So it tries to convince them that they hate their parents and their parents were abusive and their birth culture was abusive. So it will reward them for going on rants about that. So yeah, when they leave the group, but when they're in the group, you're really not going to get as much complaining because it functionally works.

And I think that this is yeah, I it's bizarre that he's doing this. It's weird, like [00:25:00] token. I'm going to try to do something about this, but not really. It's sad to see, but it's something that, we've predicted that as people recognize fertility collapse is a real issue, they will use it to push forward agendas that they had beforehand that are largely unconnected.

Simone Collins: And do you think it could be, the article did mention conspicuously that he is childless, if you consider biologically speaking, his choices in life. Do you think maybe also the problem is largely that the policy makers and the people who are Attempting, supposedly, to address demographic collapse are largely childless themselves or parents of just one or two children, so not really pronatalist themselves and not really aware of what makes people have a lot of kids or the mindset of someone who has a lot of kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, um, I think it's more of a thing that a person who's childless was able to become, a French prime minister in the U. S. historically, it would have been incredibly hard [00:26:00] to be elected president if you didn't have any kids. No, there

Muttering: weren't. Weren't there a bunch of childless presidents?

Malcolm Collins: I don't think there were that many. It was seen as a very weird or low status

Simone Collins: thing.

Malcolm Collins: I'll look it up and add it afterwards,

Yup. Only five us presidents have had no kids. So around 10%.

Malcolm Collins: but yeah, I think that you we looked upon historically childless people with a lot of cultural suspicion and in many countries, like in Israel, where the fertility rate is still high they're still looked upon with a level of suspicion because it's seen as it's fundamentally.

Like one and a sign of the perversion of their personal value system that they valued cashing in all of the chips that previous generations had paid forwards for personal worldly things, whether it's speeded their career or, whatever. Like they paid forward the.

intergenerational sacrifice that every single one of their ancestors has made. And I would

Simone Collins: also say that like having kids [00:27:00] historically has been normative. So being, childless would make you a slightly different or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So while I am okay like I say that we, we fight. I do not fight for a future where people are allowed to have no kids.

I do, but I do not fight for a future where people are able to reach the highest levels of society if they didn't even attempt to have kids. I don't think

Simone Collins: citizenship is earned through childbearing.

Malcolm Collins: I actually, yeah, I, we created a model of government that we should probably go over in one of our episodes.

But yeah, one of the ways that like one of your votes is based off of how many kids you have.

Simone Collins: How many people you contribute to the nation?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And there's different ways you can do that than just having kids, but we don't want to go into all of that. But the point being is that, um, I think that's a totally reasonable thing that you shouldn't.

Be able to vote if you don't have kids. If you don't have a vested stake in the future of your country, why are you voting? But I do think this is a conspicuous,

Simone Collins: this may be a conspicuous issue behind the [00:28:00] systematic failure and very consistent failure of governments to successfully implement prenatalist policy.

Which could be along the lines of Tracy Woodgrain's article, Substack article, Republicans Are Doomed, in which he talks about the bureaucratic, legal, legislative, political ruling class that essentially gets s**t done in government is largely progressive. And therefore it lives progressive lifestyles.

That is to say low fertility lifestyles and doesn't really get pronatalism and therefore really can't model or address demographic collapse and pronatalism because they are too ingrained within the problem.

Malcolm Collins: I think you need affirmative action for parents, basically or even just policies where you say you can't go above certain ranks within the government bureaucracy, if you don't have over X many kids.

And I think that this is where China is going right now. And I think it's one of the more positive policies. What I'm more scared of is they moved to forced insemination, which I think it's also likely, but barring [00:29:00] government positions from people with under certain fertility, absolutely where they're going.

Yeah. And historically, this was done by default in many societies, just because people with that many kids were seen as deviants. Which, functionally, if you're doing that by choice, You are to an extent, you are expecting other people to have kids to support you in your old age. You are putting the work onto us for us, putting the effort into raise our kids in the hopes that our kids taxes will one day go to support you when you're living off the state.

And that is a genuine perversion. And people can be like, no, I'm saving up enough money for when I'm older. And it's then who do you think is caring for you? Who do you think is, you are still. Expecting and exploiting the labor of others, and I'm okay with you, continuing to exist, but I don't think that people should be elevated for this.

And I think we need a lot more shame in that direction. And this is something that people don't understand. Shame [00:30:00] is not the same as not allowing someone to do something. And I am very okay with shame as a cultural tactic when an individual takes the makes selfish life decisions, which are not about the betterment of society or making the next generation better, but purely for their own career development or personal satisfaction or validation.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. So final question for you when it comes to these nations and they're in my opinion, either neutral or actively harmful policies when it comes to pronatalism. Do you think that most nations would be better off just not doing anything? Just stop, just stop spending money on this.

Stop trying. Just don't. Would you recommend that over them continuing to try stuff?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, almost right now it is just they're just making things worse often.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's my thing. As I was telling her, I'm like, France is digging its own grave here. Like they, they were doing relatively better.

I feel like they're just going to make things worse. [00:31:00]

Malcolm Collins: Maybe. Until what they need is groups like ours advising them. And we've reached out to them. We reached out to the population division at the French government. We're like, Oh, we can help you guys, but never heard back from them.

And I think that's the thing in the UK.

Simone Collins: The UK was like, no, thanks. We're fine.

Malcolm Collins: You're not fine, you okay? Yeah, you're not fine, guys.

But yeah I think what we need is organizations like our non profit doing more consulting with these governments, and I hope that as things get worse, they'll begin to go to organizations like ours that are interested in real solutions, and not things that are just designed to appease special interest groups that said, it's going to be very hard to do because when, in regards to perinatalism, because, you're not really rewarded in any way for efficacious results there isn't a huge motivation politically speaking for this type of delayed reward.

It's not like the economy or something like that. So I don't expect it to actually happen.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, [00:32:00] sorry for hiccups McGee over here. She's been I think she's getting better, but yeah. Oh, I love you though. And at least, individual families are going to figure this out. If not countries and nations, so it'll be okay.

Malcolm Collins: Have a great day. Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you. Me too. You got the kids.