They Will Replace You: What Drives Them? (With Catherine Pakaluk of Hannah's Children)

Join us in an inspiring conversation with Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, a professor of economics at Catholic University, and author of 'Hannah's Children'. Catherine, a mother of 14 (8 biological and 6 adopted), shares her experiences of motherhood, the purposefulness behind having many children, and insights from her qualitative research on mothers with large families. We discuss the controversy surrounding the book, factors influencing high fertility rates, and the cultural and policy implications of promoting intentional childbearing. Catherine also provides practical advice on parenting, gender roles in large families, and the surprising joys and challenges of raising many children.

[00:00:00]

Simone Collins: Hello everyone. We are so excited to be joined today by one of my favorite people in the entire world and inspiration to me. Catherine Ruth. She is a teacher.

She's a professor of economics at Catholic University, but more importantly to me, she's author of Hannah's Children, the book that changed my mind from wanting seven kids to 10 plus kids. It got me so excited about it. So we're thrilled. We're thrilled to have you on and we're very keen. to ask you some questions, both about the book, but also about being a super mother.

I mean, you've had, you're the mother to 14 children, eight of them that you've given birth to. It's just insane, like, that you're living this, this dream. Just to clarify, you have

Malcolm Collins: 14 children. But that gives you a lot of data points.

Catherine Pakaluk: That is true.

Simone Collins: So the first thing we were curious as we were prepping for our conversation with you and just wondering is when you published Hannah's Children, which is a book in which [00:01:00] you really share academic research where you did qualitative interviews with.

Mothers who had more than five Children or five or more Children, I should say. When you released the book or even when you were doing the research what was the most controversial thing that came up or the place where you got the most pushback or bristling?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, probably. If you want to know the truth, probably the fact that I limited my sample that college educated women.

Yeah,

it's just interesting because a lot of people wanted to you know, number one, you know, are you sort of saying that the only way to be like a full human being is to have a college education, which is funny because I'm like on the other end of this I I'd be. More inclined to say, like, we've done too much college in this country, and we need to kind of free up the education market, free up the credentialing market.

But so that was something that came up a lot as a kind of pushback was like, you know, you're, you're, you're zeroing in on sort of this a special group of people, right? Because it's not, it's not everybody. Why did you

Malcolm Collins: choose College Educated Women?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, well, I did, because that's where in the data, we really see [00:02:00] this the, the, the correlation most strongly, right?

So the more education people, women and countries have, the fewer children they have. So you see what I mean? So you kind of want to figure

Simone Collins: out this post globalization, post female empowerment world. You're totally right. It's one of the things we were just recording an episode about. was how we can't go back, how researchers have found that, for example, giving men more economic empowerment relative to women actually doesn't increase marriage rates.

You know, so like, yeah, no, okay. That makes sense. Now I get it.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. That was the reason. And of course I wrote the book really for a general audience, a very wide audience. And so I didn't want to, I didn't. Use a lot of space to make that case. It's like, it's like a couple of sentences. And then people ask me later and they're like, Oh, you know, they didn't even read those two sentences.

And they, they think like, it's really elitist to just talk to college educated women. I'm like, I didn't have a lot of space here guys, but I did, you know, I did go, I did. Intentionally, from my sample of people who applied to be interviewed, I did grab women from kind of all parts of the [00:03:00] socioeconomic spectrum.

So, I mean, you know, there are women who have college degrees who aren't living it up and just to

Malcolm Collins: make sure you got some that were poverty and you kept some on who wanted to get PhDs and work in academia.

Catherine Pakaluk: 100%. There you go. You nailed it. Like my best friends. Yeah, that's right.

Malcolm Collins: So question here. What surprised you most of the like findings or the commonalities in these women maybe that differentiated from your own experience or that affirmed your own

Catherine Pakaluk: experience?

Yeah. Good question. Let me see. So, I think this is going to sound funny, but you know, the first piece that kind of confirmed my experience was that like, people have reasons for what they're doing. I mean, I know this is like the whole, you know, this is something you guys talk about all the time.

You represent this in a lot of ways. For so many people. And I think that's so cool. Which is like, we don't end up with a lot of kids. We just don't know how that happens, right? Like, obviously like we go to great lengths to make it happen. It's something that you could with a college education or whatever else.

A lot [00:04:00] of other things you could do with your time. You could choose it on purpose. So, so that like I, my hunch going into it was like, women are purposeful. Couples are purposeful. They're not accidentally having kids. We all pretty much know how this happens at this point. And like birth control isn't that expensive.

So, so why did you do this? So, you know, but again, in a sense, it was a hypothesis. I had to, it had to come out of the research, which was like, yeah, people have reasons and they can say what they are. That was great. So that really confirmed my experience. You know, I, I, like I say in the first chapter, I know when any, every one of my kids was conceived and I could have avoided it.

Right. So there has to be like a story there. Like, what were you thinking? Yeah, so that was a big thing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there's a theory that I've been building that's related to this and we were gonna go over it at the pronatalist conference But it said all kids come into existence for one of three reasons one is a Parents are practicing Jesus take the wheel basically You know, they get pregnant when they get pregnant.

They keep the kids. They keep [00:05:00] the second category is the parents wanted a child and then did what they needed to to bring that child into existence. And then the third case is the kid was conceived accidentally and the parents then, then kept the kid. And when you're looking at pronatalist interventions, Pretty much every form of pronatalist intervention only affects now we can put the Jesus take the wheel families in a different category because they're ones so rare and already high fertility, but of the other two categories, every pronatalist intervention you can do only affects one category.

So, for example, banning pornography, banning contraception, banning abortion, all of these increase the accident kids. Whereas economic factors, increasing house sizes all of that stuff, that affects the intentional kid category. And that It's something that we can be really intentional about as we build out policy, but also to bring focus to the fact that if you look at where Children are disappearing in the United States, [00:06:00] we pointed out on a lot of podcasts, you really only see a drop in the Children.

The number of Children and women under 24 in the other categories is either growing or staying steady. And to me that represents a likely accident kids in any time recently. So what actually is causing the existing fertility crash is a disappearance of this accident category of baby. And the best way to resolve this is to increase intentionality around having Children and build more.

And I'm wondering how you would think about doing that. You've seen so many families that made this decision.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Well, I mean, so if I understand you correctly, you're saying like in a sort of move people from the accident category into the intentionality category, which is like totally possible to do.

I think I mean, first of all, I talked, so, so I mean, just, we can't underscore enough, like, I love the, I love the way you guys are thinking about this and it tracks a little bit with some of the things I'm hoping to present at the natalist. Are you guys going to person? Yeah. Or we're not. Great. This is going to be fun.

Catherine Pakaluk: Using the code word [00:07:00] NATALISM. ORG or just look up NATALCON, , you can get discount tickets using the code COLLINS, all caps.

It's March 28th and 29th this year in Austin. So, just coming up.

So it tracks a little bit with the, how I'm trying to formulate things. But right. If people have reasons for what they're doing, then they, and they can say what those reasons are. And they're not like hard to understand. Well, then, you know, that, that should inform our policy tremendously. It should have a huge impact on our, on our policy.

That's the first thing. Second thing is. I talked to a ton of people who didn't, like, grow up wanting to have kids in or not wanting to have, like, more than, you know, two kids or one, one kid, 1. 5 kids. So, so people can be persuaded, they can change their mind. And, and that's like, that's like the most normal thing in the world.

So, so a hundred percent, like our focus has to be on kind of like what defines this intentionality category, where it comes from. Where, how, what manner of educating kids is likely to perpetuate that? Because this has a lot to do with what, you know, in the policy world would think of as preference formation, you know, kind of, [00:08:00] or somebody else might just say, like, your beliefs, like, what do you believe about things?

So, that's more of just a way of underscoring the importance of the question.

Simone Collins: Well, I want to dig into this actually, because we. Sort of offline discussed the, a little bit of the way wise change, like often young parents start off wanting kids, or even a lot of kids for one reason, and they sort of build their plan, but then like, there's a totally different driver, and I feel like there's a pretty different way significant disconnect between all of the whys of high fertility families and then most of the policy focus, like I should ask, like, did any of the families that you're interviewing that you interviewed before that you're considering intervening in the future say like, Oh, well, you know, I got a little more money and so then we decided we should have a big family.

https: otter. ai

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Okay. So, well, I'll get to schooling in a minute. I mean, probably the number one thing was like, I really enjoyed my kid. Right. And that sounds like so simple. It's so ordinary. And yet you don't hear that as much. You don't [00:09:00] hear this sort of these sort of stories. I mean, I would want to merge that and say, like, there's kind of an interaction effect between I really enjoyed being with my kid and some kind of arrangement where people had the freedom to say, well, I'm really enjoying this kid.

And yeah. I could just do this full time. I mean, so that there's something there like the woman who gave up being a doctor because she just actually turned out to hate being a doctor.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Catherine Pakaluk: but presumably her husband made enough money and they could just keep having babies. So there was this. I mean, I do think the enjoyment or the experience of having kids was a big factor for a lot of people.

Then you have to ask that question. How early do you have to have that first kid to kind of yeah. Realize this like, oh, I really do like this and I'd like to do this again and again. Yeah, probably for most people That's going to be like in your 20s.

Malcolm Collins: Did you have any examples of husbands who convinced their wives and what arguments worked?

Catherine Pakaluk: Well, I had one like famous case and it was so famous and so bizarre that it like it had to be a chapter in the book. It was kind of the exception that proved the rule. Because actually right of 55 people I interviewed, there was only one [00:10:00] case of all the 55 of what I would call husband led childbearing.

And it was the least religious couple in my sample. So that I think is kind of fun and mind blowing a little bit. These were not like a bunch of religious families where the husband was like, more, more, more, you know, tribe, established tribe no, it was the least religious couple. And you know, I don't know a lot about him.

It'd be great to go back and interview him. What I do know is what I can say is that he was a, he was a faculty member at a, at a really elite school. And I won't say the state because that will, it won't help. So, you know, he's a really successful, talented person, his wife so dual PhD couples.

When they met and they first started dating he said to her right away, like, I want nine kids, you know, and actually she learned about it first through his mom and she's like, why? You know? And I guess. I guess part of the point about, like, he's really bright, and he was a bodybuilder, and has a gym in the basement, and you're like, okay, does he just, he thinks he's got, like, he's, he's, he's, he likes his life, he likes who he is, and he wants to have more of himself.

They, they [00:11:00] didn't describe themselves as especially religious. They did identify as Jewish, but she said really clearly that Jewish part is separate from the having kids part, whereas all the other Jewish women I interviewed would have said, no, no, no, like, of course, this is like the fulfillment of our religious beliefs.

Right. And so how did he succeed? I mean, he just, he just said he really wanted these kids. And The way she put it, I drilled down. I'm like, look, if you don't want the kids, how do you keep going along with this? She said, it's really hard to make it sound like he's not a dick. Like this is what he says.

And he's like, but she's like, they have this great marriage. They're really they're really into each other. And she said, you know, and this is. I think really telling, and it kind of reminds me of something that our friend at MoreBirths the, the ex account MoreBirths says she said, you know, he doesn't ask for much.

He, he doesn't want me to cook for him. He does his own laundry. He doesn't, this is like the one thing he really wants for me. We have a great marriage. And so like, why would, why wouldn't I just want to give that to [00:12:00] him? And so that sounds like in a way so old fashioned.

Malcolm Collins: I make her have lots of kids and she cooks for me and she cleans and she makes our money because I'm a feminist, full empowerment

Simone Collins: on my part.

That's interesting though, because we also didn't come from a religious background and Malcolm was the one that led the interest in fertility. See, that is

Catherine Pakaluk: interesting.

Simone Collins: And then I,

Catherine Pakaluk: well, I do, I do kind of wonder if there's part of this like secular, right. This like emerging secular, right. Which you guys are.

Certainly representative of in some sense. Nobody's representative of anything at the day, right? We're

Malcolm Collins: certainly mixing in there An episode on this in the near future one of our fans who sometimes collects data collected data in utah that was really interesting He was looking at fertility rates of mormons and voting patterns and he found some really interesting stuff in this study but one of the things that I found particularly interesting is that if You divide counties by you know, Mormon voted [00:13:00] Trump, Mormon voted against Trump, non Mormon voted Trump, non Mormon voted against Trump.

Non Mormon voted Trump has the same fertility rate as Mormon voted against Trump. So voting for Trump is as impactful for your fertility rate as being Mormon.

Catherine Pakaluk: Mormon in Utah.

Malcolm Collins: So Trump's

Simone Collins: solution to the birth rate. Get

Malcolm Collins: on my team. It'll fix the problem. Fixing may be more of a thing than people realize in terms of the vitalism.

You know, one thing I was wondering was because what I see with a lot of people, like my anecdotes, when I ask families who wanted to have a lot of kids and didn't end up having a lot of kids is it's always, well, they had that one really bad pregnancy scare or something like that. Could you run into that frequently?

Were these families who just didn't have that happen or did they have it happen and they kept going?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. That's a good question. And actually I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to come back to this. Like, well, what, what, what, what kept them going? What was the why? And oftentimes it was really enjoying that first baby.

And so, yeah, these aren't people who had like the [00:14:00] nightmare experience with their first kid. And so the first point is like, Yeah. Your experience with kids actually highly influences like whether you have more kids. Like that's a really, which kind of brings us back to like, well, what are those experiences?

Do you feel as one of the women said, like alone in a box,

Simone Collins: we

Catherine Pakaluk: send people home from the hospital. They are alone in a box with their baby.

Simone Collins: Yeah, basically a good way

Catherine Pakaluk: to put it. Actually, that's true. No wonder. No wonder you wouldn't want to go back to that. For sure. So were there no bad experiences? I would say there were a couple of bad experiences.

Where people kept going. Of course, I don't know the counterfactual. There could be, you know, bazillions of people who were potentially like multi parity people who had a terrible experience and didn't go on to have children. And I never interviewed them because that wasn't part of my study design.

But I did interview a few people who had bad experiences at the beginning. Postpartum depression. Tough kids, that sort of thing. But the description there was kind of like, we really believed what we were doing when to keep going. And at some point it leveled off. So there was also this kind of interesting idea about like three was the [00:15:00] hardest number of kids to have.

And that, you know, if you, if you kept going and got that far, like after that, it was kind of like, there wasn't that much else to, to learn. It's like, it sounds like weird, but yeah, that was.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, that's why after three, well, really after four economies of scale kicks in, and I guess with you, you like came in with economies of scale, like suddenly, like you became mother to six children.

Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Economies of scale. But I think there's another piece, which is you know, like one mom said something like, well, I hate, you know, she said something, I feel really bad for the people who give up after two, because like, now you're good at this. And so there's this idea that like, there's a skill to be learned.

And if you take that 10, 000 hours concept.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I

Catherine Pakaluk: actually haven't worked it out. How many kids do you have to have to do 10, 000 hours of parenting? That's a quick question. Gosh, like, actually not that much, like, you're, you're, you're,

Simone Collins: a couple of years in you're.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. You're probably pretty close, right?

Simone Collins: Even if you're not doing a whole lot of childcare. Yeah. Right.

Catherine Pakaluk: Cause unlike the other skills, you have to like go out and do them. For a few hours a day, whatever that is like to 10 years over a few hours a day. But anyway, I mean, [00:16:00] just take that concept. I think this is a big piece of our culture is that people think of parenting as a binary condition.

Like you're, you're our parent or you aren't a parent. But there's such a thing as being like a better parent and a worse parent. And actually I think that's why people don't like to talk about it. Cause it seems like you're criticizing people like, Oh, you're, you don't even, you don't have much experience, but actually we've got to talk about parenting as a skill in part because it's great news.

it means that actually you can get better at it.

Simone Collins: True. Yeah. Speaking of parenting as a skill, I mean, you are, yeah, you've done a lot of it. I'm very curious to hear what one you would say is most misunderstood about being in a large family, a parent in a large family. And, and two things that you learned after having a lot of kids where you now like.

When you meet someone who's becoming a first time parent or they're about to start their family, you're like, let me hit this off.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Maybe I'll go backwards. Things that I want to head off at the, I'm like, I look back, especially with my last few kids and I'm like, [00:17:00] wow, I didn't need all this stuff.

Like all that stuff, like those, you know, the babies, you got all like four different kinds of strollers and baby seats. And I just didn't know. Right. All the stuff I really. Maybe there's no way to prevent that, but I think part of it is like at the beginning you feel like, it's like the crash test dummies, you feel like you need to sort of, everything has to be protected and it needs a tool or a machine.

My last couple kids I just had like a thing I threw, like a backpack or a thing and I just, the car seat never left the car, I didn't tote things around. I hardly use strollers to be honest. Same actually. Yeah, I mean, maybe because I don't live in a city, but you know, mostly if I went out with my kid on foot, I would carry the kids.

So, I found baby wearing to be really something that freed me up to do a lot of things. You have your hands when you're, yeah, when you're wearing your baby.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean,

Catherine Pakaluk: I used to teach classes with the baby on my back, which was great. Anyway, so I think there was a sense in which when I was younger, like, there's just a lot of stuff.

And like, I carried a huge diaper bag at the beginning. And then later it was like, I don't think I [00:18:00] need more than. Two items and I can stick them in something else. You know my pocket like there's a diaper and a and a onesie in my pocket I'm good to go, right? It's a good pocket that that goes against the

Simone Collins: female conspiracy against pockets,

Malcolm Collins: but I

Simone Collins: know

Malcolm Collins: here's a question What are your thoughts on advice to people who are dating to attempt to find a partner who wants a lot of kids?

Yeah,

Catherine Pakaluk: well, you definitely have to be up front right and I think people have to like have to match on that from the beginning. I don't, I don't know. I guess I've known a few cases where it was like, surprise. I really, but I feel like that ought to be like very high on the profile. Oh yeah. Right. It could kind of cut through a lot of stuff.

I suppose people don't want to like reduce the pool or something, but fundamentally that's what you have to do is reduce the pool.

Simone Collins: You get to know sooner if you filter them out earlier. Otherwise you've just wasted two weeks or more. Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Cause I think if you don't have kids, I mean, right. If you don't, If you don't have kids, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a pretty big sell.

I mean, it's a, it's a, something you really have to kind of [00:19:00] get through. But yeah, that's my number one thing with my, my own kids that are dating my college students. You're like, you, you, like my son dated a girl in the fall and they met on hinge and, you know, and you're like, Did you know, do you know if she wants kids, you know, three weeks in, you know, it's like, Oh, it's not going to work out.

And you're like, that's what it was. Wasn't it

just

kids, right? It's like, well, cause if anybody will say you want kids, maybe you have to be more specific. It's like, I want to get married to start a family like right away because that'll scare them off really quickly. Yeah.

Simone Collins: No, would that have scared you off Simone?

Well, on our second date, Malcolm was like, I want to have a lot of kids, but I didn't say right away. I didn't say right away. Well, it was on the second date. It was on the second date. Yeah, it was after and it wasn't like the first conversation. I think it's a good second date subject. Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. You don't want to let it go.

You don't want to let it go too far. Yeah. There's some chemistry and attract. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, obviously, like, look, churches do this for people. And so there's a lot of this happening in churches where you don't [00:20:00] have to be explicit, like you're both, you're part of some tiny traditionalist group.

And you know, like everybody in this church already agrees that this is what we're going to do when we get married. And then you don't have to have all those conversations. But I think if you're just dipping into the big pool and a dating app or whatever, you're going to have to get it out there quickly.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That's fair.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So at the beginning I interrupted you, you were going to say the second thing that you thought was interesting in the pool of people that you had or surprising to

Simone Collins: you. That surprised you about the

Catherine Pakaluk: interviewees? Right. Well, I guess this was interesting. I guess. Well, I don't know.

Like, I'm, I'm familiar with Catholics. I'm Catholic. But I interviewed women of a bunch of different religious backgrounds and beliefs, and I didn't really know what the story was going to be. And I think what surprised me was to find out that while religious identity was strong in most of my interviewees, except for that one, that one couple what surprised me was how I don't know.

Way to go, baby. Is he drinking? She's drinking the beer. Yeah, basically. Just Malcolm. That's so cute. It's a girl, right? [00:21:00] She's a girl. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, what surprised me was actually like how non credal the common sort of religious factors were. Meaning they were Kind of common across all of these different Jewish and Christian groups who shared the same, you know, or, or partially share the same scriptures.

So this kind of like thing that you can say in a, in a, in sort of non religious terms that children are blessings, I guess it's a religious term of like a blessing. But you know, it wasn't like, well, the Mormons have this One idea. And then the Jewish women had a totally different idea and that it was really linked to their specific religious creeds.

It was pretty general. And so I think that was interesting. So I, I've started to think and, and by the way, what was the content of that? It was this, we, we might call it pronatal belief. I know that's what some people like to call it or like a conviction that children are, are really important, worth having.

Yeah. And I think what that drove me to think, and I'm, I'm really kind of [00:22:00] thinking about this going forward, looking at the social science of religion. I mean, you've seen this Pew study that was out this week about how like Christianity stopped falling. I guess the number of people who identify as Christian stopped falling.

It's not exactly like it's rising, but it's stopped falling, like that's what Ryan Burge is calling it. Like maybe we hit the floor of and so. I think that the study of religion, the scientific study of religion in this country has got to move past like just these denominations. Like, that's as much as we do.

We just sort of survey. And what I'm finding is there's this like minority group in all these different religious groups that has this very strong we could say biblical set of principles or beliefs about the value of having children, but And if you want to know who's having kids, you, it's like, that's who you have to find.

It's like the 5 percent of Mormons and the 5 percent of Catholics and the, and so it's religious. It is religious for those people, but you couldn't find them just by finding out who's religious. You'd have to dig into, so it's like intersect the being religious [00:23:00] with this specific belief. Like, so it's like, what kind of religion?

Did you find any

Simone Collins: unifying, was it that they also lived in really high fertility communities? Like were there correlatory factors that seem to indicate like, okay, so this is, this is what makes them that 5 percent of Mormon or Catholic or whatever it may be that is really high fertility.

Catherine Pakaluk: Well, I'd be hesitant to draw a strong conclusion from my relatively small sample, which wasn't representative but I did have like all kinds.

I mean, I did have people who did live in these smaller communities, but a lot of times, like, they went to move near them. So they already, they got this belief, or they became convinced of this. And then that's why they sought out the community. So the causality went in the other direction. It's true. I had one lady who moved to a, because of a school and then met a bunch of people and was like, okay, I can keep going.

But then you've got the couple in chapter seven and they just are like opening the Bible and they feel like, you know, they're Jesus take the wheel types. And and they just are off by themselves at their own church in the Rocky mountains. So I think we need to do more [00:24:00] research on that. I think there were certainly cases where clearly the orientation or belief was coming out of how they were, how they had been.

Educated how they've grown up and that's a piece that's relatively understudied. So it's something we can take to the data in the next couple of years and kind of ask like what, what types of schooling most predict higher, higher birth rates. Mike, like my hunch would be, we'd see a lot of homeschooling, we'd see a lot of private independent schools, like micro schools, co ops, things like that.

That'd be my hunch, but I haven't asked the data yet.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we're really, we'd love to see more research on that too. And he's like, in terms of,

Malcolm Collins: oh, go ahead, you're talking about the, the idea of these high fertility sub factions of these religious communities is, is participation in them intergenerational?

Like does it persist with fidelity or do they deconvert to the other type of Christian within this community? Have you seen?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: That well, that's the question. There's been a little bit of work on [00:25:00] intergenerational transmission of values in in that I looked at in in European data, but my problem with that data, because it would it would it would argue that basically like religious groups don't pass on their values like particularly well, but I would argue that the thing that they're not looking at is the.

Beliefs of the groups like it's not granular enough. Because some people clearly are. And so, you know, you just need to get more granular. What type of religious group is it? And then how do they educate their kids? We know that sort of alternative schooling isn't that common in Europe. So. If I were to guess I would say that that's the missing link.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I I don't know I actually i'm gonna push back here I think that a lot of people who are from religious backgrounds when they see things like the rate of religion stabilizing or growing what they think it is this family's getting better at keeping their kids within the religion and what it actually is is people training new types of religion that are radically different from their parents version of christianity.

Yeah and i've seen increasingly poor [00:26:00] rates of keeping kids, especially within the incredibly conservative iterations of religions. One of the things I was telling Simone recently, I didn't know is apparently, and I've got to look for more information on this, but the F. L. D. S. The F. L. D. S. R. FLDS are the most extreme.

Those are the Mormons that have like multiple wives and dress kind of frumpy. Apparently they just held their third gay pride parade this year.

Speaker: Two towns on the Utah Arizona border with deep roots in the FLDS Church will celebrate pride this weekend. Jenna BreE shows us how queer people are openly showing their colors.,

Speaker 2: An area known for its polygamous community and ties to the fundamentalist LDS Church,

Speaker 3: the history of the town.

Um, you know, I feel like it kind of gets a bad rep.

Speaker 2: Last year, Short Cr in the fourth of july par they plan on marching wit again this year.

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Malcolm Collins: Like we're seeing within the most extreme factions of these religion communities, they're losing [00:27:00] young people to woke like at a way higher rate. Which is really shocking.

It's not what I would expect

Simone Collins: because I thought they were more culturally isolated. It's

Malcolm Collins: what I'd expect if you have a cultural preference for high authority and following what the average of the community pressure.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say that we definitely have to study this more because we don't really know.

Simone Collins: More data is needed. I want to hone in on something that you said about sort of the factor that made people want to have a lot of more kids,

Which is that first kid is that they, they really like it. Like they have one and they get hooked. And I think Malcolm and I got hooked after two or three, like it wasn't, I think.

We think the hardest number of kids to have is one. It's just like, you're doing everything for the first time. It's too stressful. But I'm also curious from a policy or cultural design or lifestyle design standpoint, if you came across factors that you think correlated with that being a good versus bad experience, like basically being alone in a [00:28:00] box with your kid, sort of terrified and alone versus super enjoying what we think is like the hardest stage first time with everything.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Hmm. You know, I'm just, I'm reaching, it's not something that that I, I mean, I would certainly say I was gonna say some sounds, sounds obvious. Like, I would certainly say for me, the, the, the hardest transition was zero to one.

Hmm.

I think in terms of like, just the, the chaos of parenting, it was harder.

Like at three or four, or three toddlers was really tough. Oh. But yeah, like the lifestyle changes, like the psychological shock was biggest from zero to one. There she goes again. But I had a lot of I had a lot of kind of cultural capital coming into that because I came out of a large family.

So I kind of had this vision, like it's going to get better. Oh, you'd seen it before. Yeah. And I felt like that's probably the, the me, you know, like that would, that would have to be, but then, you know, then you kind of bump into this. I think it's one of the reasons why lower birth rates beget lower birth rates, like how you get into these traps that keep cycling [00:29:00] down because I think that the fewer kids there are around, the less you have like a, a belief that it will get better.

You haven't seen it before. So that we don't have any context to interpret how difficult that is.

Simone Collins: Yeah. At one point in the book, you do talk about the. The shortage of, of people growing up in America who even have had exposure to infants in their entire lives. Like maybe when they have a kid, that's their first time encountering a young human which definitely was.

It's pretty much the experience for me, for example.

Catherine Pakaluk: So do you think

Simone Collins: that's

Catherine Pakaluk: a big factor? I think that's a huge factor. I think, I think it's got to be a huge factor. I mean, I did some back of the envelope, you know, calculations, like how many, how many years of your childhood would you have been exposed, like even if you had one sibling, which is a pretty normal family these days, two kids.

Well, like most normal people are going to have their two kids and probably maximally like a five year span, which means that by the time, by the time your brother or sister is [00:30:00] born, you're like two by the time you're six, you're not going to remember a baby by the time you're 12, a baby never happened in your house, you know?

Right? So I think that's gotta be enormous. Like, and then you don't have cousins nearby and then that's it. That's, that's got to be really good. When you feel strange, like, well, think about like you're in the hospital and like you've got these unrelated human beings who are like, let me show you how to put up a baby on your boob.

Yes. Yeah. And change a diaper. And you think about like the dogs and the cats and that like you think what a weird species that we like need someone To show us how to feed our our offspring

Malcolm Collins: Which I hadn't thought to ask before but I guess it's actually really important for this new theory I have if you were going to Estimate what percentage of these high fertility families, you know five kids over when you were talking to them. Didn't plan on their children i. e. They were using a full jesus.

Take the wheel thing Not not tracking their cycles not anything like that Versus what percent do you think really intended on having every kid they had? [00:31:00]

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah well i'm pretty sure because I did ask like I asked about every kid in the interview It's it doesn't necessarily come out in the book I'm, pretty sure it was like one out of 55 was the jesus take the wheel case Yeah

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that was my way as well.

Incredibly rare. I was talking with a Catholic reporter about this and I was like, it's rare within Catholic communities. And he was like, what makes you think that? And then Simone had great evidence for that. She said, well, they track their cycle so well that they were the first to realize the vaccines were causing issues.

The only reason you would know your cycle that well.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yes, yes, exactly. I don't think they would mind if I yeah. Share this case, but well, I'll just say I know a young couple. I wouldn't say who they are, but they got married. They're Catholic. They got married. They knew because she was, they were tracking before they got married, cause they wanted to have kids.

They knew that they got married like on peak fertility. Nobody would know that. And so like they got off their honeymoon and knew that there was a good chance they were expecting because they got married on peak, peak, peak fertility tested at the earliest possible minute, you know, so, but [00:32:00] like under two weeks from their wedding, they knew they were expecting.

And you nailed it when you get people looking at them like you definitely must have like gotten pregnant before you got married But that's because people don't understand how granular that is and how much I could know about your cycle So that's really interesting. I only met one family I put them in the book because again like my job was to display the whole diversity of it The general story was that people did intend and knew exactly when they got pregnant but there was that one couple that in chapter seven and we're like we just didn't ever we didn't ever do anything to plan or it Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's really rare. And I, and I think that's what we should expect. Like, I think people are kind of, people are smart and they, they learn stuff and, well, I

Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't think it used to be that way. I, I think that this is a, that used to make up maybe 30 percent of, of some populations birth rate, maybe.

You know, 50 60 years ago.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, I think that's correct. And it's, but it's, it's one of the reasons why I don't know, some people sort of naive idea that we could just like ban [00:33:00] birth control would somehow like change the picture. I don't think it would change the picture.

Malcolm Collins: It might for like communities in poverty that are really uneducated like with apps being what they are now.

I think people just people find a way. Also,

Simone Collins: historically, you can see different birth rate trends and when economic prosperity goes up, suddenly birth rates go up to like, I've always kind of had a ways, even without the apps, even without, you know, you can pee on you. There have been so many ways for people to take care of their children.

I mean,

Catherine Pakaluk: probably, you know, probably like the teenagers and the kids that like people who aren't planning to have sex and then all of a sudden, you know, so they weren't tracking or something. But that's, again, that's that third category that's shrinking, this kind of accidental ones. But I think among the people who like.

Are coupled up or would like to be coupled up. I mean, I think people are they're either using birth control. They're tracking tracking is becoming incredibly common. And it's like, so easy to do it at this point. I do think that's going to be a huge piece of the future

Malcolm Collins: of what percent of the kids were in public school

Catherine Pakaluk: of the kids of the [00:34:00] women that I talked to.

Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'm curious. We're around public school in these communities. Or was this That's a great

Catherine Pakaluk: question. You've asked me a question for which I don't have a ready answer. I didn't total that up. But if I'm just thinking through the people I talked to it was certainly under 50%.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah.

That makes sense. Well, I mean, this is, I see it being terrified. We have our kids until middle school and public school or until they say they don't want to be there anymore. And our own community is like, you can't put that, like, what are you doing?

Catherine Pakaluk: Amazing.

Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. Well, I mean, I think that I mean, we're, this is a kind of a funny moment to talk about schooling because my own, I think like 10, 15 years from now, the, the menu of options that are going to be out there for schooling is going to be so diverse and so different from what we have now.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the Collins Institute is improving quickly. We're, we're adding a test and tutor to it, which should be ready by the summer. We're trying to

Simone Collins: like make possible at scale. And [00:35:00] very affordably aristocratic tutoring, which just seems like such a great way of learning, you know, just being able to explore what you like and talk to someone who can guide you through it

Catherine Pakaluk: and

Simone Collins: not be, you know, taken through this industrial system.

But yeah, I mean, I think a big factor that we look at certainly with pronatalism is just. School choice and educational freedom because there does seem to be this element of mainstream culture that just takes the focus away from that point that you point out of just kids are good. You know, kids are a blessing.

Kids are good. And that that is this really important meme that takes place with high fertility. And I'm, I'm curious to get your thoughts on like other ways that a country trying to improve its birth rates can do that. I mean, we've, when you were talking about your exposure to babies thing, for example, I was thinking about, I think it was in Australia, that one case where the birth control program, where teens had to take home baby dolls yeah, they were like, Oh wow, this is, I can handle this.

This is great. Like they, they got exposed even just fake baby dolls and it [00:36:00] encouraged more fertility, which is crazy. But then there's, there's kind of examples of like watching teen pregnancy reality TV. really successfully reducing rates of, of teen pregnancy. Cause they saw it as like low class or undesirable or disastrous.

And I'm curious if you saw anything among the families, I mean, it sounds like even within your family. Yeah. With your kids who are dating. There are some discussions on like, well, I mean, do the partners want to have kids? How do you promote a pronatalist kids are a blessing culture within your own family?

And how have you seen the families you've spoken with do it in a way that's not like, you know, creepy or backfiring.

Catherine Pakaluk: Right. Well, I, there's probably a lot of things to say if there's like the policy stuff, by the way, I wanted to say that I think, okay. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful that like the remote work stuff is going to keep going because I think it's crossed.

Yes. I think that's been, I mean, look, I, I work remote. I mean, although I, I have a job that wouldn't have been called remote work for a long time, but when I was in [00:37:00] college and I knew, like, I wanted to have kids and be, you know, be, be able to have kids. I remember looking at the menu of options. I was like, well, I'm, you know, Doing economics and math.

And, you know, there's a strong pull to do wall street or finance at that. And I'm looking at it like you have to be in your actual office, you know, like 40, 50, 60 hours a week, not going to work because I want to have a couple of kids. So I'm looking at it as a young person thinking, how come like academics aren't like all with a huge family?

Cause I'm thinking to myself is what blows my mind. It seems like these people have very flexible jobs, right? So, so why? Yeah, well, I think like academia is like tilted left and sort of anti natal as long as I can, I mean, certainly for 100 years, if not more.

Malcolm Collins: Have you run into anti natalists yet?

Catherine Pakaluk: At university or in general?

Within your

Malcolm Collins: job or within your promotion? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I

Catherine Pakaluk: get emails from them a lot. Oh, okay. I'm like, yeah, I mean, you know, like the nastier ones are the ones who send you these little scripts. Do you guys get them? Like little handwritten, scrawled notes and you're like, Oh, [00:38:00] yes. I'm looking at this script and like, I think you're 95 and you're in the Bay Area.

Was it on a

Simone Collins: used, like, bill envelope? Cause that's what we got. Like, you know, the ones with the w