The Pronatalism of Silicon Valley

We hear a lot about the “baby boom” of the 1970s, but far less about the “birth dearth” of 2023. That’s when only 1.62 children were born on average per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Fewer babies means fewer adults who can contribute to the future economy, military readiness, Social Security, education, and family formation of their own.

It also points to a dim reality for the many Americans who are delaying or forgoing marriage and children altogether. This crisis has caught the attention of socially conservative groups such as The Heritage Foundation, American Compass, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Institute for Family Studies, as well as Silicon Valley elites like Elon Musk.

When considering the different kinds of pronatalism—and not all approaches are created equal—I typically rely on a “pro-family” versus a “pronatalist” distinction. Those in the pro-family camp recognize the essential role of family formation, beginning with man–woman marriage, as a part of the solution. In contrast, those who promote a “more babies” pronatalism tend to encourage childbearing detached from its natural role within the family. The pronatalists of Silicon Valley, however, have a distinct goal that supersedes both categories.

Many of these Silicon Valley elites find themselves in the emerging class of right-wing progressives who view technology as the natural solution to and means of childbearing itself. They tend to promote, in practice if not in speech, a selective pronatalism: more babies of a certain kind. Here the goal is not necessarily saving America from demographic decline, but of ensuring that their future children are the healthiest, smartest, and best potential children they can be.

And, unless Silicon Valley pronatalists impose principled self-restraint onto their reproductive technological developments, such efforts may only further birth inequality and demographic collapse in the United States.

The Pronatalists of Silicon Valley

Since 2021, when Elon Musk called the birth decline “one of the biggest risks to civilization,” he has been a fearless ally and legitimizing force behind the “more babies” pronatalist movement. He, unlike many in Silicon Valley, has promoted this message in word, deed, and in his personal life, welcoming his twelfth child into the world in 2024.

Most high-profile investors and users of Silicon Valley’s fertility technology, however, are drawn for a different reason. Their primary goal is not to reverse the birth dearth in the United States. Their interest—to the tune of $800 million invested in fertility technology start-ups in 2022 alone—is the creation of genetically superior babies who are selected, often out of a misguided compassion on the part of their parents, based on their health, potential creativity, or other characteristics.

This is not the first time that Silicon Valley elites have turned to technology to overcome a natural part of the human experience. Prior to their emphasis on fertility technology, many Silicon Valley elites—including Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bryan Johnson—invested heavily in technological means to overcome aging, viewing death itself as a disease. Given that the reproductive systems of women and men are among the first parts of the human body to deteriorate, many of these same investors have also begun to invest heavily in efforts to extend or avoid the need for human procreation. Further, as their logic goes, instead of waiting until a child is born to invest in longevity and life-saving care, why not select for the healthiest embryos from the beginning?

Main Players and Projects

Investors in fertility technology include a “who’s who” of Silicon Valley. From Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong, and Jack Abraham, to Nicole Shanahan and Vitalik Buterin, such technological optimists are looking for a way to reverse reproductive aging, overcome infertility, and optimize child selection.

Some investments are focused on developing fertility awareness-based methods or restorative reproductive medicine such as 28—a Peter Thiel-backed application from the right-leaning Evie Magazine. This phone application teaches women how to live within their natural cycle with fertility tracking, fitness, and nutritional insights. Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate and former spouse of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, pledged to give $100 million for reproductive research, especially focused on helping women become pregnant later in life. Such efforts emphasize restorative efforts that heal and work within a woman’s natural body.

Beyond this, however, much of Silicon Valley’s fertility research tends to fall into three categories: embryonic optimization, technologies that replace the need for human gametes or wombs, and the use of artificial intelligence in the analysis and selection of human life.

Embryonic Optimization

In 2021, Noor Siddiqui—a former Peter Thiel fellow—launched Orchid, a fertility service that allows couples to screen for more than 1,200 monogenic diseases. While basic preimplantation genetic testing is widely available in the United States—with 75 percent of clinics offering these services—Orchid allows couples to sequence more than 99 percent of an embryo’s genomes. Instead of merely testing for single-gene disorders such as Down syndrome, polygenic testing allows Orchid to screen for conditions that involve multiple genes.

By sequencing an entire genome—technology that has only recently been implemented beyond research labs—Orchid offers parents a polygenic risk score. This score, provided through a user-friendly interface online or in an app, allows parents to see the potential outcomes and genetic predispositions of each embryo. Many of these potential diseases include non-life-threatening conditions such as diabetes, obesity, or hearing loss. It also examines potential neurodevelopmental disorders and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. With an initial investment of $12 million, interest in Orchid and similar start-ups like Genomic Prediction and MyOme has only continued to grow.

Among Silicon Valley elites, there is a lot of interest in developing this technology. Orchid’s investors alone include Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart; Anna Wojcicki, the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe; Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase; and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there is still skepticism about the reliability of such technology, millions of dollars are actively being invested to test it.

Technologies that Replace the Need for Human Gametes or Wombs

In recent years, researchers have turned their attention to emerging technologies such as in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) and artificial wombs.

In 2016, two researchers in Japan announced that they had genetically modified skin cells from a mouse into viable egg cells using an induced pluripotent stem cell method. Researchers were able to fertilize these genetically modified gametes to produce “grossly normal” pups who went on to have their own pups. Such technology circumvents the need for human gametes by allowing scientists to create eggs or sperm from any DNA. Now researchers in Japan and at the California-based company Conception have turned their attention to applying this technology to human gametes, although neither have reported success.

Similarly, scientists have already begun working to develop artificial wombs. Dystopian projects such as EctoLife—an untested model—depict a warehouse of artificial wombs that gestate children from conception to birth. Though this technology is still far from becoming a reality, many in Silicon Valley would like to see the development of complete ectogenesis, outsourcing the entirety of pregnancy to these artificial wombs.

Practically, scientists are working to develop partial-ectogenesis wombs that would serve as a life-saving technology from twenty-one weeks’ gestation. The infamous “lamb in a bag” artificial womb is an example of this form of womb development. In 2023, researchers applied to the Food and Drug Administration to begin testing such wombs on severely premature infants around twenty-one to twenty-five weeks’ gestation who would otherwise die in the womb. This technology, while restorative, represents a step toward complete ectogenesis, or childbearing devoid of a maternal womb.

The Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Selection of Human Life

Scientists have begun to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to fertility technology to streamline the entire process. Such technology assesses each aspect of the patient’s well-being to recommend medications, dosage amounts, optimal cycle development, and even which embryos have the highest likelihood of resulting in healthy children.

Alife, the leading program that offers AI-empowered tools, relies on a machine-learning algorithm to comparatively assess a woman’s health data. Alife raised $22 million in 2022 alone and infuses artificial intelligence into the process of human reproduction. Many doctors and researchers have begun to integrate this technology across the United States as part of their standard process.

While 54 percent of respondents in a 2024 American Medical Association study claimed they were “very or extremely concerned” about the potential for eugenic practices in embryo selection, an increasing percentage of Americans say that they would be more likely than not (40 percent likely) to use such technology to select for intellectual aptitude.

The Misguided Philosophy of Silicon Valley Pronatalism

Silicon Valley’s pronatalism is distinctive in its approach to childbearing for one crucial reason: like many, Silicon Valley elites desire to control the process and outcome of childbearing, from the kind of children they create to the way their children are born. Unlike most people, however, these elites have the funds and tools necessary to act on these desires in unprecedented ways.

Such a worldview encourages these elite leaders in their use of technology to insulate themselves—in the name of their future children—from the risk, uncertainty, and vulnerability inherent in childbearing. By removing childbearing from its natural context and placing it in a tightly monitored environment, such parents receive a misleading, false promise of safety. In their effort to overcome the unpredictability of childbearing, many may increase suffering.

It is here that we see the most pernicious examples of Silicon Valley’s genuine, but misguided, compassion. Noor Siddiqui recounts her own mother’s experience as part of her inspiration for launching Orchid’s advanced genetic analysis operation. When Siddiqui was only in high school, she watched as a rare degenerative retinal disease slowly destroyed her mother’s eyesight. This condition, while not life-threatening, altered Noor’s life and left a lasting impact on her. Her solution? The creation of advanced polygenic technology that allows parents to weed out embryos who may develop similar, or worse, conditions. The irony of this, of course, is that this technology does not heal the unhealthy embryos—it destroys them. If such technology had been available and desirable to Siddiqui’s grandparents, it is very possible that neither she nor her mother would have been born. At the end of the day, is the desire for the healthiest child worth the cost of all those whose lives will be deemed unworthy?

In the name of their children living their healthiest life, this technological worldview has trained many in Silicon Valley to view the human person as individual parts or raw material whose genetic makeup predetermines their values, beliefs, capabilities, and identity. Nurture plays a secondary, or unimportant, role in the development of each child. Such conclusions, which ignore both religious insights and sociological findings, enable parents to free themselves from the personal responsibility of stewarding their child’s development. At the same time, it heightens their self-imposed responsibility to create and select genetically superior children.

Does Silicon Valley Pronatalism Worsen the Birth Dearth?

In this sense, Silicon Valley elites—and all those who are inevitably influenced by their lifestyle and technology—encourage people to view children as a luxury good or a commodity they can adapt to their lifestyle. And, in a materialistic age when survey respondents in the United States cite a desire for personal independence or leisure as their primary reason for delaying or forgoing childbearing, this materialistic view of childbearing may be more likely to worsen, rather than cure, the birth dearth.

If children are just another luxury good—and an increasingly expensive one—that adults may invest in, it should be little surprise if such pronatalist movements depress birth rates in the long run. Moreover, the high cost of Silicon Valley’s pronatalism is likely to exclude most people, exacerbating the inequality that already exists among certain classes and families.

Of course, some may be tempted to ask “So what? You can pursue a pro-family natalism over there while we pursue our own ends here.” While appealing at face value, this approach is unlikely to reverse our birth dearth. It could even make matters worse. If ever more Americans come to see children—especially with the aid of technology—as just another product or experience to consider alongside other goods (longevity, travel, career, or comfort), then even more of them may decide that children are just not worth the cost.

What may result in more children, of a certain kind, in the short run, will ultimately shatter the worldview necessary for childbearing to flourish among all persons, and not just a select few. Civilization, in a very real sense, only survives if people view family formation and childbearing as a fundamental, pre-market element of the human experience. Childbearing, in the long run, requires a proper moral obligation to protect it from inappropriate intrusions of technology.

The Pro-Family Ethic and a Better Way Forward

Still, a demographic crisis is upon us. We should encourage people to have more children—and not simply as a means of mitigating this greater crisis.

This is where pro-family natalism comes in. The pro-family approach recognizes that marriage and family formation are the basis for overcoming the birth dearth in the United States. By encouraging family formation, we ensure that children are born into environments where they are most likely to thrive and nurture their own love for children.

Moreover, this approach encourages people to view children as an extension of marriage in which children may be received as a gift and not merely attained as an act of the will. This shift, as merely rhetorical as it may sound, is one of the most powerful forces pushing against the materialistic pronatalism of Silicon Valley, which prefers the creation of a certain kind of child.

Preferential treatment in the selection of genetically superior children, which ultimately discourages parental involvement and the widespread conception of children, is not worth it. We need a cultural revolution that promotes a sustainable and life-giving pronatalism that asks men and women, in the words of Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, “why not have one more child?”

Image by moldboard and licensed via Adobe Stock.