Last year, I was intrigued by a line in an article about the superhuman wonder babies of a “pronatalist” couple of almost overwhelming eccentricity. Simone and Malcolm Collins, they of the ostentatious, thick-rimmed glasses, seemed to indicate that their expensive designer babies attended “daycare.”
I wondered, do they mean conventional daycare? Do they not realize the empirical and anecdotal data suggesting that a single caregiver is a superior arrangement to multiple babies with multiple caregivers in an institutional setting?
In a fascinating update, we learn that the Collinses have removed their wunderkinder from daycare. The update was fascinating for many reasons. For one, the husband-and-wife duo spoke via split-screen podcast format despite, presumably, living in the same house. For another, there was a reference to Simone giving birth the next day. Why not record a quick podcast whilst readying for the big day? And, the conversation was fascinating because it revealed that they did, in fact, opt to remove their three young children from daycare.
A fanciful aside before we continue: nomenclature reveals what we value and aspire to. As the offspring of controversial model and influencer Nara Smith have names that evoke a zany world of invented mythos and folklore like the “Rootabaga Stories,” Malcolm and Simone’s choices would aptly be described as names that belong in Ayn Rand’s fiction. Octavian George is fairly mild. But his younger brother is named Torsten Savage. Wow. The girls are where it gets interesting. We previously noted the girl named Titan Invictus and their reasons for this aggressive choice. This year’s model (born the day after that podcast, perhaps?) is reportedly named Industry Americus. Materialists with lives stranger than fiction, indeed.
With that context in place, let us turn to the subject at hand. Their primary reason for withdrawing from daycare had nothing to do with the social and emotional benefits of a dedicated caregiver. These seem to have escaped the notice of the self-proclaimed nerds. In their telling, the main reason for opting out of the 6:30 AM daycare drop-off was the crippling expense. Because they began their fervent pronatalist life in their mid-thirties, they seem to be making up for lost time by having several babies close in age. This means, while awaiting the arrival of number four, kids one through three are all still in the costly full-time daycare stage.
To wit, the Collinses claim on their podcast that they were spending more than $1,000 per week on childcare, amounting to more than $62,000 per annum. They claim hiring a live-in nanny, various au pair arrangements, and other attempts at a dedicated childminder all failed. With a budget of more than $50k, that is a remarkable claim, but we must take them at their word (if we are even interested in this personal expose).
The secondary motive for ending daycare was the susceptibility to illnesses. In an extremely scientific manner, Simone documented how many days of a random succession of time while the kids were in daycare that members of the family were sick. It was a lot. Parents who have a tot in daycare will attest to the barrage of illnesses, many of them intense and prolonged, that will assail all members of the family when a baby is in daycare. The Collinses speculate about contact tracing and economies of scale as the source of all this illness, but others have questioned whether the stress of being taken out of the home and put in a group environment which does not foster adequate rest and one-on-one caregiver bonding contribute to compromising the child’s immune system, resulting in the six months to two years of relentless illness when adjusting to daycare. Who knows? Perhaps there are studies? Most families will have times of seemingly never-ending illness, though usually not quite so intense. In any event, Simone and Malcolm found that ending daycare ended illnesses.
What else ended? Tantrums. They keep charts of certain behaviors for their autistic son (and then share every last detail with strangers on the internet). Tantrums flatlined. Could it be that there were elements of the daycare setting that their son found unpleasant or unhelpful? If he was getting dropped off before 7 o’clock in the morning, how many consecutive hours was he expected to stay in daycare, a place he may not have liked? Despite the fact that on other occasions, Malcolm has put a camera in his son’s face and asked him questions about how certain parenting decisions make him feel, these are not questions that children are capable of answering. They only know what they have experienced.
In addition to tantrums, other undesirable actions diminished or stopped altogether. What are the children doing instead of daycare? Malcolm has been outspoken that the agreement he has with his wife is that childbearing and rearing will never interfere with her professional aspirations. Therefore, it is not as though removing children from childcare will result in a change of chosen work. And, indeed, it has not. Instead, the Collinses claim to have effectively leveraged arbitrage with their new neighbors. They will handle the IRS paperwork for various businesses and the neighbors will take care of the plebian concerns like oil changes and daily childminding.
So convinced that the only obstacle to their genetics flourishing is helicopter parenting, the Collinses seem to express little interest in the environment their children inhabit for the majority of their waking hours. According to them, there are various toys for them to mess around with. Meanwhile, they insist that “educational” programming on old tablets (erroneously referred to as i-Pads in writeups on the family) are beneficial. The rising rates of myopia would suggest our eyes didn’t evolve for tablet use, but I’m not some data-obsessed nerd, so what do I know?
However inscrutable the motivations of the thick-lensed Randians, the Collinses’ decision to remove their children from daycare is good, perhaps even laudable. Self-described “autists,” these guys are weird. But what they show us in their evolving experimentation is that there really is no substitute for real children. It’s not absurd to think that their unwavering commitment to producing seven children compelled them to take an unconventional approach to their children’s daytime hours, one that will benefit them in ways far beyond the cessation of tantrums.
When faced with real children, messy, loud, embodied people in need of nurturing, we cannot live in abstractions and fantasy without consequences. Whether it’s staggering bills or double pneumonia, endless tantrums or lack of feasibility, whatever the reason for moving children into a more personal, relationship-based childcare setting is good. Under the weight of four young children the myth that conventional daycare is harmless crumbles.
Modern-day, atheist, tech-obsessed Puritans living in self-imposed austerity, the Collinses perplex. While they may be awarded worst made-up holiday ever for replacing Christmas with “Future Day” (on which the “Future Police” take the children’s toys and task them with writing a contract to earn them back with promises of creating a better world), they might stumble on some good ideas when challenged with raising a bunch of children in a sane and sustainable way. Hope springs eternal for those whose freak flag flies high!
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