- Malcolm Collins, 37, punched his toddler during a conversation in a restaurant
- He left the Guardian journalist ‘horrified’ and gave a wild explanation for the slap
- Readers of the Guardian article reported him to child protection services
A pro-natalist influencer dad has come up with a wild theory about why he thinks hitting babies is good for them in the long run after punching his toddler in the face in front of a reporter.
Malcolm Collins, 37, left a Guardian journalist ‘horrified’ after punching his two-year-old son in the face on Saturday as they dined at a restaurant in his hometown of Valley Forge, a suburb of Philadelphia.
The boy, who was named Torsten Savage, slammed his foot into the table, causing him to wobble, and his affected father reached over and punched him in the face so loudly that the reporter’s tape recorder picked it up.
At the time, they were discussing father-of-eleven Elon Musk, who shares Malcolm’s enthusiasm for pronatalism – an ideology promoting high birth rates.
After hitting his child, he continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.
But the next day, Malcolm revealed a Guardian article detailing the interaction, which sparked a wave of calls to child welfare services from concerned members of the public.
At the time, the journalist justified the controversial parenting style with a parallel with tigers and how they deal with their naughty cubs.
He said he and his wife Simone, 36, who is pregnant with their fourth child, have watched feral cats react to unruly cubs with a quick wave of their paw. They tried it with their own children and found it very effective, he explained.
“I was just giving you context so you don’t think I’m being offensive or anything,” Malcolm told the reporter, who said the slap wasn’t “hard” but was loud enough to be heard on her voice recording.
Malcolm’s explanation of the physical reaction did not satisfy some readers, who raised the concerns of child protection officials.
“More people called. [child-welfare services] because of that,” Malcolm told the New York Post on Sunday. “There is now an active movement to take our children away.”
The Pennsylvania couple are leading proponents of the theory that large families are essential to the future of civilization through their charity, The Pragmatist Foundation.
This ideology, known as pronatalism, promotes a large progeny of children as a means of addressing the declining global birth rate, which believers believe will lead to economic collapse as retirees eventually outnumber the working population.
The Collins’s unconventional parenting style has called in childcare services before.
Malcolm told the Guardian they were called “because our children had used clothes, because they were sick too often”.
“That was when we had them in kindergarten; of course they were sick all the time – and because they saw them playing outside without us being out.
“It’s a locked area that you can see from the house.
“Virtually all high-fertility families have had this happen,” he added. “The government says that if you raise your children in a cultural context that’s different from ours, that’s child abuse.”
Malcolm and Simone Collins have three children: six-month-old daughter Titan Invictus and sons Octavian George, four, and Torsten Savage, two. They are using IVF to have their children and hope to have a total of seven children.
Simone is currently eight months pregnant with their fourth child, a girl they will name Industry Americus Collins. Both parents are also autistic, which they see as a strength.
In conceiving Titan Invictus — a name they decided on because they feared a female name would be taken less seriously — they used genetic testing and embryo selection to remove genes associated with diseases such as obesity and depression.
This is one of the many reasons why the pro-natalist movement is controversial and many consider it a form of eugenics.
In fact, the Collinses have been called “hipster eugenicists” – a label they decry.
“We don’t think humanity can be perfected, we just want to give our children the best possible roll of the dice,” Simone told The Telegraph earlier this year.
Preimplantation genetic screening is not regulated in the US, but there are several companies that will test embryos for risks of certain conditions.
These include Sam Altman-backed Genomic Prediction, which the Collinses used to assess their children’s health.
For what they call “controversial stuff,” they’ve taken data from that company and employed a team of scientists who claim they can predict the likelihood that an embryo will be happy in the future.
On the subject of pronatalism, Malcolm said Tesla czar Elon Musk, 52, is “fantastic” for the movement, describing him as “our version of the king”.
“I mean – the most powerful and richest person in the world championing your cause helps a lot,” he told the Guardian moments before slapping his toddler.
“In this time period, it’s our version of him being the king or something. He’s kind of disconnected from—” Malcolm said before pausing to smack the two-year-old.
“I support much of what Elon stands for,” he continued afterward. “Our policies are very aligned.”
Musk’s ex-girlfriend and mother of his three children follows Malcolm’s wife Simone on X.
The richest man in the world had 11 children with three different women. “If people don’t have more children, civilization will fall apart. Take my word for it,” Musk said at a business summit in December 2021.
He described population collapse as the “greatest danger” to humanity, even greater than climate change. Musk went so far as to say that Japan, which has the world’s lowest birth rate, will “eventually cease to exist.”
The tech mogul has six children with first wife Justine Wilson, whom he divorced in 2008, three with on-again/off-again girlfriend Canadian musician Grimes and twins with his employee Shivon Zilis.