~ Posted by Lucy Farmer, August 6th 2014
A British sitcom in the 1990s called “2point4 Children” followed the lives of the Porter family: mum, dad, son and daughter. The title played on the once-average number of children per family in Britain. (The average fertility rate was 2.4 in the 1970s; it dipped to 1.7 in the mid-1990s and is now back up to around 1.9.) The global average today is 2.5—the population is rising.
For our last Big Question, we asked six writers: how many children should you have? We then asked readers to enter the moral maze by voting in our online poll. Stats aside, it is a deeply personal decision, and one that most of us will have to make. There are many things to take into consideration, including the cost, your sanity, a child’s happiness and the planet.
The vote soon turned into a two-horse race. Jonathon Porritt argued that having two children had “massively enriched” his life, but any more would be detrimental to the environment. His view just prevailed, with 27% of the voters agreeing that two makes the happiest family. David Benatar took the controversial line that “the only way to prevent harm altogether” is to have no children. A quarter of the voters also wanted to remain childless, although perhaps for different reasons. The Economist’s Emma Duncan took the pragmatic, or sardonic, view that having three children provides a high cost-benefit ratio and ensures a diversified portfolio. In the poll, 15% also chose three as the magic number. Lauren Sandler wrote a stringent defence for having one child—despite the stereotype, onlies are not “l(fā)onely, selfish and maladjusted”, she wrote, and 13% shared her view.
Large families are not as fashionable these days, but Kevin Maxwell recommended a clan of seven children that can be “self-supporting through successes, failures, celebrations and bereavements”. Only 8% were persuaded. But the least popular number was four children (5%). Ma Jian never planned to have so many, but he now feels “a sense of symmetry and completion” when his family sit at the kitchen table. So readers of Intelligent Life want to get as close as they can to 2.4. But this, even more than most, is a Big Question with no right answer.
Lucy Farmer is assistant online editor of Intelligent Life
Image Topham
