After news broke of Elon Musk’s twins that he fathered with his Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, one significant figure has criticized Musk for sleeping with a subordinate and bringing more children into a broken family.
Michael Burry, an investor who somewhat predicted the 2008 economic crash and was subsequently made famous by the movie “The Big Short,” indirectly called out Musk in a tweet highlighting how the disintegration of the nuclear family is hurting society.
“Babies born in the US are at 1950 levels, but that doesn’t mean that bosses should sleep with subordinates to try to remedy the situation. Bigger problem is nuclear families are at 1959 levels, and woke doctrine wants it lower. More babies in broken families not the way,” Burry tweeted.
— Michael Burry Archive (@BurryArchive) July 7, 2022
Musk has been loudly promoting population growth and has voiced concerns over the U.S. population decline.
In May he tweeted, “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years.”
USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years pic.twitter.com/v5PSLbvEAE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2022
Then, after the news of his twins broke yesterday, Musk tweeted that he was doing his part to fight the underpopulation crisis facing the U.S.
Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.
A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022
It is important to increase the birth rate so that there is population replacement and growth, but Musk’s many children are now part of a fractured home.
Musk has nine living children now. But he has had them with three different women, not counting the surrogate who gave birth to one of Musk’s children.
His most recent twins he had with Zilis. Musk also has two children with Claire Bouchard, the musician known as Grimes.
He also has another set of twins and triplets from his first wife Justine Musk, the New York Times reported.
Having lots of children can be great, but fracturing families through divorce and multiple mothers is simply unhealthy for the children, family and the broader society.
Sociology and even economics have shown that the model of a nuclear family is the most healthy way to develop people and society.
Do you think that Musk is right about an underpopulation crisis?
Yes: 70% (16 Votes)
No: 30% (7 Votes)
“Though much of the public seems unaware of it, family scholars believe that—generally speaking—children are best off growing up with their two married parents. These are the children most likely to get the education crucial for maintaining a middle-class life in an advanced economy, to remain stably employed, and to marry and raise their own children to go on and do the same,” scholar Kay Hymowitz wrote for the Institute for Family Studies.
“[A] nuclear family headed by two loving married parents remains the most stable and safest environment for raising children,” W. Bradford Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, wrote for The Atlantic.
However, many progressive Americans are strongly disputing and trying to disrupt the nuclear family structure.
Black Lives Matter, for instance, is a key example of a massive cultural movement aggressively trying to dismantle the nuclear family.
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable,” Black Lives Matter documents say.
But the idea of abolishing the importance of a stable two-parent head in favor of the “village” method for raising a child is dangerous, as studies have shown.
“Over the years, study after study has detailed the many possible downsides to introducing unrelated adults, especially men, into children’s lives without the presence of those children’s married parents,” Wilcox wrote.
For instance, unrelated, non-parent adults being brought into the home drastically increases the chances of child abuse and neglect.
Wilcox cited a federal report that showed that “children living in a household with an unrelated adult were about nine times more likely to be physically, sexually, or emotionally abused than children raised in an intact nuclear family.”
The bottom line is that broken families and resorting to the village method is simply a bad way to raise children and will negatively impact the whole society in deeply damaging ways.
So Burry is absolutely correct: More babies in broken families is not the way.
Congratulate Musk on his children, because life is precious and good. But do not congratulate him for continuing to fracture his family with more children from yet a different mother. He is creating a damaging situation of a broken home.
The answer is not just “have more babies,” as Musk seems to think.
There need to be more babies in stable, loving and secure families with two parents.
Only then can our society actually flourish and effectively fight against the underpopulation crisis in the long term.
