NEED TO BREED

With global birth rates in free fall, Silicon Valley’s ‘pronatalists’ are aiming to halt the decline – by having as many babies as possible 

- IO DODDS

EARLIER this year, Aria Babu quit her job to dedicate herself to something most people have never heard of. After working as head of policy at a London think-tank for a number of years, the 26-year-old had come to an alarming realisation about the future of the UK, the world – and the human species. 

“It became clear to me that people wanted more children than they were having,” Aria says. 

“Considering this is such a massive part of people’s lives, the fact that they were not able to fulfil this want was clearly indicative that something was wrong.” 

The new focus of Aria’s career is a philosophy known as pronatalism, literally meaning pro-birth. Its core tenet is deceptively simple: our future depends on having enough children, and yet life in developed countries has become hostile to this basic biological imperative. 

Bolstered by declining birth rates, pronatalism has been gaining currency in Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry – especially its more conservative corners. 

“I’ve been in various text threads with technology entrepreneurs who share that view . . . there are really smart people that have real concern around this,” says Ben Lamm, a Texas biotech entrepreneur whose company Colossal is developing artificial wombs and other reproductive tech (or “reprotech”) that could boost future fertility.