The change from one to two is large, but nowhere near double the change from the first child. Three kids is not three times as hard as one kid, and four kids isn’t twice as hard as two kids. In my experience, it almost plateaus.

Of course, we don’t have any children with major disabilities, but still… a lot of people do have an inflated idea of the difficulties involved.

1. Malthusianism is alive and well (see Heather and Karen), a particular intellectual malady of the rich.

2. There is no immigration rate which is politically and socially possible to compensate for a very low native birth rate.

3. It is easier to convince a couple with two children to have a third, than to convince a couple with one child to have two. It is almost impossible to convince a couple with zero children to have one.

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I know, just look at India. In a five years’ time, I fear they will be all but extinct.

“India’s high population growth results in increasingly impoverished and sub-standard conditions for growing segments of the Indian population. ”

How lovely, the natalists must be happy.

Especially by keeping those starving millions outside their white-picket fence neighborhoods and shooting anyone who tries to cross into the US in order to escape horrible living conditions abroad.

I’m not sure what county, you live in, I mean there’s 67 in my state alonebut if that’s true, then we’re making progress. Life was said to be “nasty brutish and short” for everybody just a couple centuries ago.

Of course, I’d take the filth, misery and “ignorance” of the middle-middle class over the moral squalor, nihilism and derangement of the upper middle class and above.

Well, it’s nice to know, then, isn’t it, that filthy, miserable, and ignorant aren’t as bad as they’re cracked up to be? Here we are, educating our five children, living in a comfortable home, eating well, etc., and all below “upper middle class.” So filthy, miserable, and ignorant can apparently still be clean, happy, and educated.

Does it take some effort to stay clean, happy, and educated on our income? Sure. Does it involve making some choices and sacrifices our upper class friends don’t have to make? You betcha. But it’s really actually pretty bearable. In fact, just now, sitting next to the Christmas tree with some gifts under it, having finished some shopping today to prepare for our feast, and looking forward to the occasional outburst of intelligent multi-syllabic conversation from our offspring, I’d say it’s pretty darn good.

You don’t get out much, do you, Karen?

For all the talk by OWS of the “1%”, the most enlightening point I heard was that on a world-wide scale virtually all of Americans are in the 1%.

In part I agree with this this, because selfishness is not the only operative cause here. I suspect, based on experience very few people plan to have no children (ever) and if they do, it’s because of some fear (inadequacy, genetic issues, Malthusianism, etc) rather than autocentricity.

There’s a difference between planning to have no children and not planning (or planning to delay) to have children, one is an act of commission, the other omission.

The culture is antinatal. Our health insurance laws (long before Obamacare) demand treatment for pregnancy-but often with an explicit reasoning that it is a “disease”. Tax laws contain a variety of “marriage penalties”. Civil law provides for equity of divorce, but not in marriage.

I know several young couples-two following a familiar path-the necessary precursors of “starting a family” are completing college, establishing a career (whatever that means) and then spending a few years where marriage is a joint venture in free-spirited economic indulgence. Somehow, the years get out of control, a “careeer” is not an uninterrupted experience in income escalation, and suddenly you are 30 (or worse) 40 and tomorrow is today and worse, yesterday.

Worse, the most thoughtful might be the most hesitant, because they realize their best efforts at raising children to be responsible, independent, sober, chaste-”God-fearing” if you will, are going to be undercut by a culture that seems to tempt with everything but.

However, assuming one can be persuaded to have kids, having a message that ignores a (not the) factor, will just make selfish childless couples into the selfish parents we read about all of the time, whose subordinate the primacy of their children’s needs to their own.

The idea that people can’t be told they are selfish is spawned from the same ideology as the one that tells Johnny 2+2=5 is ok and gives ribbons and trophies for trying. Since our “leaders” constantly chastise us for being “selfish” when we don’t want to “contribute” to their latest scheme and they obtain working political majorities doing so, I’m not even sure it’s that unpalatable.

There are times in our lives when we need to be confronted with the errors, not only of our ways, but the thinking that motivates them.