Editor's Note, June 2025

We’re always looking for ways to get media attention with our rational but outspoken, rights-based take on population challenges. Newspaper editors tend, however, to be more interested in giving space to those threatening that low fertility and slower population growth will upend our economies and institutions — the demographic concern du jour. Just look at all the articles about Elon Musk claiming that “humanity is dying,” and that if low fertility continues, “civilization will disappear.” Or the platform given to the truly unhinged statements and behaviors of Malcolm and Simone Collins, the poster couple of the pronatalism movement. Simone’s old fashioned bonnets, ruffled shirts, and long skirts are an odd match for the duo’s commitment to conceiving genetically perfect offspring using IVF. She says she’ll keep having babies until she dies or her uterus falls out (she’s currently pregnant with their fifth). While attending the second Natal Conference in Austin, Texas, in March, Simone admitted to an NPR reporter, “We constantly court controversy in order to get our message out because we know that’s what gets clicks.”

Given our typical challenges with getting earned media — we’re not willing to be “intentionally cringe” to get clicks (another of Simone’s admissions) because we know that it wouldn’t be helpful to our mission — we’ve been encouraged in recent months that survey and focus group research we completed at the end of 2024 (detailed in an article here) has drawn the interest of several reporters at high-profile outlets. We heard back from three journalists at large national newspapers that they’re interested in our study about fertility perspectives, preferences, and impediments, and a fourth journalist, Lydia DePillis of The New York Times, mentioned us by name in an article in late March after receiving the press release about our study:

“An agenda that prioritizes large families makes plenty of people queasy. Groups like Population Connection worry that the tactics required to raise birthrates can verge on authoritarianism, and believe that the consequences of population loss aren’t as catastrophic as pronatalists make them out to be. And increasing numbers of young people do not want to burden the planet by having children of their own.”

Then, in May, Fortune published an article by Beth Greenfield that specifically referenced and linked to our survey:

“Earlier this year, a survey by Population Connection found that, while most people want a small family, others feel unable to have more kids due to factors including affordability, the state of the world, and lack of societal support for parents. And while only 15% of those surveyed thought the falling fertility rate was one of the world’s biggest challenges, nearly half (45%) were actually concerned about population growth over fears of children living in poverty and depletion of natural resources.”

While pronatalists continue pressuring women to have more kids, we’ll continue advocating for reproductive freedom for all and for a healthy planet to support humanity’s future generations, whatever size they may be.

Marian Starkey, marian@popconnect.org