Malcolm and Simone Collins continue to intrigue me, which infuriatingly is the whole point of their in-your-face publicity stunts and marketing plan. They defy easy classification, which is part of their charm. Atheist materialists with some element of Bible-believing, they are on a mission to convince more people to have more children to combat the demographic crisis (I think. Perhaps I’m just not intelligent enough to understand their grand mission). They make many fine points about the need for pragmatism, the nature of human work and human happiness, the value of suffering and of austerity.
Following the “Atomic Habits” principle of pairing an unwanted task (evening puttering and dealing with life’s miscellany) with something enjoyable (listening to maniacs on YouTube), I have wound my way through several of the labyrinthine episodes of their daily (yes, daily) podcast posted to YouTube. After a while, I was struck by just how much the Collinses have in common with the Gilbreths of “Cheaper by the Dozen” fame.
After spending evenings with the Collins clan, impersonally and virtually, I was tempted to experiment with artificial intelligence (they profess intense love of and optimism for AI). I am, in my heart of hearts, skeptical of new technology. I use the microwave and love to type on a laptop, but AI. I am squeamish. Some work assignments have prompted the introduction of these large language models to interact with my own large language model known as a brain. Having gained access to “Claude,” I attempted, boldly in my humble estimation, to see if Claude could “see” what I see: The Collinses are the Gilbreths of the 21st century!
Short answer: no. People wiser than I tell me that AI has not yet reached the capacity for inferences. Maybe the cloaked tech lords are holding back its full superpower? In any event, I don’t know if the Collins’s pronatalism campaign is successful, but I can attest to the fact that their enthusiasm is unexpectedly catching, as evidenced by the fact that I queried an AI chatbot about them, not something I would have done otherwise.
Here is what Claude had to say about Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and Malcolm and Simone Collins:
Both couples have been involved in writing books and sharing their ideas publicly. However, the specific nature of their work, the time periods they lived in, and the fields they focused on are quite different.
Without more verified information, I can’t draw extensive parallels or make in-depth comparisons between these two couples.
Well, OK, Claude, if that’s even your real name. I have no qualms about delving into copyrighted material for purposes of commentary, speculating widely, inferring with abandon, and making a fool of myself, so here’s my list:
Lots of children
This one is perhaps obvious. Both Frank and Malcolm want to be known for having many children. In the fictionalized account of the Gilbreth family, the long lineup of children was a source of great pride to the father, always eager to introduce “the latest model.” Malcolm, though currently only the father of four, insists that the family shops exclusively at BJs because the family is just so large and they have every intention of going up to child 7 or 8 if possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Which is a bit distressing when you consider that Simone is allegedly accomplishing this through successive rounds of IVF and c-sections, but that’s a story for another day.
Married partners working together
The Collinses have observed, as I also have, that historically we did not see a model of mothers “staying home” and excusing themselves from the workforce. Women’s participation in the labor force has been described as “u-shaped,” with most women contributing to the labor force through family business or the like, then factories, and only in more recent time, with the advance in technologies, women “staying home,” and gradually over the more recent decades following a trend of reentering the labor force in services and technology industries.
The Gilbreths, like the Collinses, brought this cottage industry format to information work. Lillian, very much ahead of her time, worked throughout the years and, after Frank’s death, took over the engineering business herself and had a career in full. The Collinses, in addition to their advocacy work appear to be in some kind of search fund investing or small-scale private equity, something they do together.
Fascination with efficiency and the latest technology
The Gilbreths made a science of efficiency with their motion studies and work to improve factory output. The Collinses use pragmatism to define their lives and their altruism (I don’t think they would consider themselves related to the effective altruism movement but there is some utilitarian overlap, as far as I can tell). So committed to efficiency were the Gilbreths that they would time their book editing process to coincide with Lillian’s confinement, allowing her to use the time well. Of this, the Collins would strongly approve.
In both families, there is a strong emphasis on doing the most possible. There is a puritanical streak, culturally speaking not religiously, in the patriarchs. If I’m not mistaken, both Lillian and Simone may both be from California, which is itself fascinating that the dynamic between the two would bear such striking similarities.
The interest in efficiency lends itself to enthusiastic adoption of the latest technology. Frank had German and French instructional records playing on the victrola to prevent wasting time while brushing teeth. Malcolm loads educational videos on tablets and longs for the robot that can monitor his children while they run in the woods. Where Frank subjected the family to photographs with home cameras, Malcolm shoots video of the family for the internet.
Secular materialism
Quite surprising, there is no apparent religious motivation for having so many children in either family. Frank seemed to scoff at religion generally, again somewhat speculating merely from a fictionalized account. Malcolm practices some idiosyncratic mumbo-jumbo that involves being an Atheist materialist who also reads some stuff in the Bible and other religious texts. While we can’t say much definitive about either man, they seem neither one to be motivated by moral obligation or religious belief.
Seeking media attention, consistently getting unfavorable attention
“Cheaper by the Dozen” finds Frank many times parading the children through media appearances and public display. The results are generally less than favorable. There’s one amusing episode when a camera crew films the family eating dinner outside the lighthouse where they spend part of the summer. When the footage is put in a newsreel about the large family of efficiency experts, the film was sped up to give the effect of all the children sprinting through dinner.
The Collinses claim to have a deliberate strategy of making viral content and signaling to people through their comically bad press. The journalists who spend time with them seem bewildered rather than antagonistic. It’s an interesting strategy…
Malcolm and Simone Collins appear too enigmatic to be cultural leaders. Many aspects of their work, family life, interests and tendencies call to mind the Gilbreths as presented in “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Both Malcolm and Simone speak quite favorably of their ancestors and have written material from the lives of long deceased grandparents and great-grandparents. Let us hope that this tradition of respect for ancestors, coupled with a fine sense of humor, will allow the Collins children to appreciate their zany upbringing as the Gilbreth children seem to have done.
Notably, contrary to the grand, pronatalist plan laid out by Malcolm, none of the Gilbreth children went on to have many children.
