In the short, nasty and brutish world of non-human life, fecundity is a trait tempered by a number of exogeneous factors. The availability of food during the breeding season influences the egg count and litter-size of creatures; birds lay less in a lean year (or raise multiple nests in a boom) and bobcat numbers rise and fall in sync with jackrabbit trends. Even so, a healthy population of any species is more likely than not to explode in an average season, unless checked by the plethora of natural predators and physical challenges (rigorous migrations, harsh winters, drought etc...) that weed out the less fit and save only those few specimens naturally-favoured for survival.
At times, a species can breed at such rates that even the more ravenous carnivores fail to catch up. With overpopulation that strains food and habitat resources, and the intraspecific aggression that arises as every individual competes for a dwindling share of sustenance, the result is a crash (such as those periodically experienced by lemming and voles) that reduces the population to an ebb, at least for a while.
Most people, I imagine, would not counternance such scenarios for humans. For one, how many naked apes have fallen prey to wild beasts in recent centuries (and who needs slaughter by wild beasts when other naked apes to a much better job, using gas chambers, guns and gulloitines)? And as science progresses, the natural attrition that a mother's lifetime brood could expect falls to nearly nought, as vaccines and widespread primary health care combat infant and child mortality. Malthusian models are now disproven for man, thankfully for some and less so for mother nature, but it seems that even those who preach the rationality of procreation on non-religious grounds have failed in their turn to catch up on the dramatic changes experienced by the human life cycle in the century since that dismal scientist.
Unless one believes that natural resources are infinite or that humanity would be better off from pursuing its logarithmic growth over every square inch of earth, why should there be surprise, even hostility, to the notion that populations that have hit a peak in demographic density, enjoy living standards whereby life is not merely a race for bare survival and gene descent, and are under increasing pressure to compete for prime employment, housing and healthcare opportunities, might not consider it a joy, or even natural duty, to raise the bucketful of babies that their ancestors did? Or indeed none at all.
Some families positively welcome the children they receive, and all power to them for the road they have chosen. But the trend towards smaller or childfree families that is evident in societies where few would be satisfied with the very basest of needs should indicate that some individuals, living amist a multi-nodal web of demands, affliations, interests and causes that serve both the welfare of corporations and communities, have freely decided (and weighed the costs) that genetic progeny offer little or no accretion to their sense of identity, self-worth and completeness. But it bewilders why the existence of such choices are often deemed detrimental to some other segments of society, especially when the voice of groups seeking to cast in legislative stone the patriachal model of household structure vastly outshouts those few who would simply like to make it known that children are a choice (made out of love and desire rather than because it's just something that every couple must have), not a condition of familyhood. In fact, the vast majority of childfree couples are hardly proselytisers, wanting merely to live without judging or judgement, but still suffering the periodic cries of "you are so selfish" and enduring the prejudice of both politicians and priests.
The argument that choosing non-procreation is unnatural betrays both a severe ignorance of nature's teeth and claws, as well as a distressing assumption that unchecked population growth imposes insignificant costs to both this planet and the societies that strain under the lack of resources and bounty of aggression that dense environments undergo. Casting aside religious arguments and pleas to emotional sentiment (what joy a babe would bring to thee!), there is no credible case for regarding human population booms as a good in itself. Not that those such as budak wish to preach the universality of deliberate barrenness, but merely that the growing number of wilfull childless individuals in post-modern milieus is neither a threat (a saving grace rather!) to those who choose otherwise, nor unnatural as far as it reflects a demographic safety valve for stressed systems.
A further note: notwithstanding the unrelated observation that pro-family (and militantly procreative) voices find little to disagree with schools that preach the power of the invisible hand, it puzzles as to why the alleged self-correcting, all-encompassing forces of the marketplace would fail to address the so-called disequilibriums and disruptions in national incomes, profit indices and pension funds that are prophesised should production units prefer to generate income and consumption for their employers and economies over creating parasitical beings that suckle on subsidies and gnaw on tax breaks. Even so, should these fiscal crutches be insufficient, the state and those who return more than they receive could hardly refuse to abandon families incapable of supporting themselves. In these days, when even healthcare and education are no longer deemed universal entitlements for subsidy, the family unit as traditionally defined remains inviolable and official blessings and funding for its propagation beyond questioning. But why should I wonder so? For is it not the natural order of things that God (and his appointed stewards) rules the family but man serves the market?
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