First, we had word that the Equal Rights Amendment might be resurrected. Now, I’ve seen word that another concept I would have thought dead and buried might be on the way back. Via Q and O, I found this article at Cybercast News:
Ahead of Earth Day on Sunday, an advocacy group warned that the United States is ignoring “the most crucial factor in reducing global warming” — population control.
“Human population growth is the paramount environmental issue,” Ric Oberlink, a spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, told Cybercast News Service
Ummmm..OK..
Meanwhile, in an oddly related story, Marginal Revolution points to an article in Psychology Today, which looks at optimal family sizes:
Interestingly, second and third children don’t add to parents’ happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child-though still happier than women with no children.
“If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child,” concludes Kohler, adding that people probably have additional children either for the benefit of the firstborn or because they reason that if the first child made them happy, the second one will, too.
Back in the days when I was studying to be a life actuary, before I saw the light and jumped over to the P&C world, I remember studying for the old demography exam, encountering discussion on the magic of having 2.1 children. That textbook argued that 2.1 was the appropriate average number of children to raise in a traditional family - one child each to “replace” mom and dad, plus “fractional child” to replace an infertile adult in the population.
Advocating only one or none kids as standard practice for environmental reasons seems just odd, unless you’re actively seeking population reduction. I figure that if you’re trying to argue simply “we have enough people”, then seeking two-children households, with the odd 3-kid family thrown in would be the way to go.