Do you have children?

[ER]

Winston Churchill said the ideal number of children to have was four, since that would be one to replace the father, one to replace the mother, one for population growth, and a spare in case of tragedy.

Of course Mr. and Mrs. Duggar say the idea number of children is roughly equal to an hour's output for a queen bee.

[FatFreddysCat]

Mr. and Mrs. Duggar say the idea number of children is roughly equal to an hour's output for a queen bee.

Mama Duggar must be the most fertile woman ever to walk the earth. She can get pregnant just by standing downwind from her husband. :D

[sprite75]

Nope.  Not going to either.  Even if I do find someone I got myself fixed back in December because I don't really want to bring children into this world.

[ER]

The plethora of posters here who report having no children and wanting no children is not entirely atypical of what is being seen in the First World in this century, wherein citizens of many nations are not even demonstrating a birth rate sufficient to keep a steady population: they're losing people quickly and drastically.

People living in the Third World, and in particular those of the Islamic faith in and out of the developed world, are having so many more children than many developed western nations (and Japan too) that this outbreeding of the west is going to completely change the nature of life on this planet in this century. (Between Commonwealth immigration and a higher birth rate among first and second generation immigrants, it took only about sixty years for English people to become a minority in London, the capital of the English nation/UK and the English-speaking world.)

When people speak of the effects of overpopulation burdening humankind and the resources of the planet, these effects are much more drastically detrimental in and because of Third World populations than elsewhere. Deforestation, inadequate sewage disposal, accumulations of trash materials, draining of natural resources without management, all these and more are ecological disasters rising from the growth of massive populations in undeveloped and underdeveloped regions.

There's also the fact that the cultures seeing the most population growth are not those which have traditions that western nations enshrine, like women's rights, the rights of homosexuals, religious freedom, tolerance, democracy, respect for diversity. We like to think progress is a constant in life and the gains in human rights we've made in the west are now permanent, but the signs point to a  tipping point wherein the Third World will soon so greatly outnumber the developed world that consequences may arise which leave the gains in human rights that grew out of the Age of Enlightenment consigned to the past. A past likely to be erased from the record, if the actions of the totalitarian movements of recent history are any indication.

Just as I spent years saying we were overdue for a pandemic, I have also long believed the odds are a dark age is coming, and many of its roots will lie in the fact the west has simply let itself become numerically inferior, while at the same time admitting into itself peoples whose cultural traditions are not those of egalitarianism, and yet who may one day simply vote those rights out of existence. Or maybe voting will itself go away, since rarely have Islam and democracy been bedfellows. (Or democracy and any of the many forms of dictatorship and totalitarianism that seem the default setting of the "might makes right" human race across the world and across time.)

I think our culture is dying, and it's looking more and more like suicide.

[Alex]

I do agree that our civilisation is headed for a dark ages-style collapse sooner or later. I am not convinced that the third world will benefit from it though, but it was an interesting argument to read.