Leading advocate for big families smacked son, 2, during an interview — now he says trolls want to take his kids away
The leader of the “pronatalist” movement supported by Elon Musk that encourages families to have lots of children to stave off population decline is under fire for slapping his toddler in the face in the middle of a news interview.
“Multiple people called [child-welfare services] over this. There’s now an active movement to take our kids away,” Malcolm Collins, 37, a dad of three who co-founded the foundation with his pregnant wife, Simone, 36, told The Post on Sunday.
Guardian journalist Jenny Kleeman, who interviewed the couple in and around their home in Valley Forge, Penn., for the weekend feature, has described being left “speechless” by what she witnessed and devoted the final quarter of her lengthy article to recounting the incident.
Malcolm explained that the family uses corporal punishment — which is legal in Pennsylvania where the couple lives — only as an in-the-moment corrective action during potentially dangerous situations.
Such situations apparently included when his 2-year-old son Torsten “knocked the [restaurant] table with his foot” and nearly caused it to topple over during the interview.
“That fell into the category of something that could cause serious harm to himself or others. At a table full of infants, knocking it over could easily kill someone,” said Malcolm, whose other children are ages 4 and 16 months.
Malcolm defended the family’s “bopping system” as a personal decision they’ve made but said he wouldn’t recommend it for every parent.
He said much of the outrage the interview sparked is the result of people trying to conflate “light discomfort with abuse.
“This is where trigger warnings come from or the idea that being offended or offending someone is a form of violence,” he said.
“There’s no tolerance for any form of emotional or personal inconvenience.”
Responses on X to the article were primarily negative, with some lobbing insults or threats the couple’s way.
“Hey man what’s your address I just gotta come over and correct your behavior with a few bops,” one user wrote.
Another warned, “Your kids will hate your child beating ass, if they don’t already.”
Malcolm’s wife Simone told The Post she was raised under the same mindset as those expressing outrage online, in which “under no circumstances” is “non-positive” physical contact permissible.
“It’s hard to get out of that bubble. It’s hard to think practically about what is going to aid your child’s survival and safety,” she said, noting that the couple has done extensive research on the subject of corporal punishment and never applies it in ways which are “delayed, painful, or violent and harmful” to the child.
She also dismissed the couple’s online critics, saying, “I think most people who hold this position either don’t have a lot of kids or don’t have any kids at all,” adding that the prevalence of “helicopter parents” has led to a generation marked by “helplessness and lack of personal responsibility.”
Asked whether she and Malcolm grew up being spanked, Simone said “very rarely.
“But kind of like with our kids, there were instances where I was very young and put myself or others in danger and was corrected in that way.”
The Collinses, who have two boys and a girl, are expecting another girl any day. They told The Guardian they plan on having at least seven children.
The fruitful lifestyle that the couple advocate is unconventional but not fringe, counting a coterie of prolific tech billionaires as supporters.
This includes Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, a father of five who in 2022 donated nearly $500,000 to the Collins’s foundation, and dad-of-11 Elon Musk, who warned in 2022 that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilisation than global warming.”
Despite the uproar that followed the Guardian article, Malcolm said he felt the feature “did a very good job” of illustrating “when we think corporal punishment is warranted in our family and when we don’t,” noting his primary goal as a father is to “raise them to be psychologically resilient in an age of psychological fragility.”
