The Explosive Desire for Children

The overwhelming consensus among politicians, economists and demographers is that the population explosion should be checked by making birth control devices and counseling more widely available, particularly to poor people. Nonsense, says a scientist writing in the British journal, New Society. According to Peter J. Smith, a lecturer in geophysics at the University of Liverpool, the problem -- at least in the U.S. --is not lack of birth control but excess desire for children.

Citing Gallup polls going back to 1943, Smith says that the median number of children considered ideal by non-Catholic American women has always been more than two. Well-educated, middle-and upper-class women usually want fewer children than poor women. But "on the average, all parents desire more children than the number required to maintain the population equilibrium." Birth control devices are already widely available to all but a tiny fraction of U.S. citizens. Smith declares, but -really effective population control cannot be achieved until there is a change in society's attitude toward procreation. As things now stand, social and institutional pressures tend to stigmatize the childless couple -- not to mention the single person -- as "abnormal." Smith concedes that such an attitude had its use in the past; it "evolved over millennia to ensure high enough fertility to overcome high mortality." Now, however, medical progress has made that notion obsolete. Smith proposes that the reform start with the elimination of tax advantages for big families.

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