Two reasons the poor have large families. No, three I think. 1. It’s cultural. Roman Catholics are taught not to practice birth control. Latin countries in particular, heavily Roman Catholic ,tend to have large families. 2. Fucking is fun. No further explanation needed there. 3. Having a child is an act of creation. There are very deep connections to our psyche and our spiritual natures that impel us to share in the creation process.  When you have nothing else, when you feel that your are unloved and unloveable, creating a child gives a person affirmation because of their dependency and unconditional love toward their parents. I think that those are the most powerful reasons. A dog would be cheaper, but it can’t say, “I love you.” To add a few more– 4. Before the Industrial Revolution, a family’s survival depended upon being able to produce food or having a product or skill that others needed. Having lots of children provided more workers to provide for the family. 5. Children provide a sort of immortality. The family name and traditions are carried on through their children. 6. The high infant mortality rate before the discovery of penicillin and modern medicine plus the relatively short average lifespan even 200 or 300 years ago encouraged large families to survive at all. 7. Having many children increases your chances of having somebody to take care of you in your declining years.

Not taking care of them is a recent phenomenon. Families before mechanized transportation lived close together in clans. All living relatives lived in the same village or area. Children were not necessarily raised by their parents alone, but by a community of relatives. People were more interdependent and certainly provincial. With growing independence, mobility and affluence, we have become more self-centered. In the past, the influence of religion, through more fear and tradition than conviction placed controls on acceptable behavior. Today, that’s hardly a factor. Many modern parents want children but don’t want them to interfere with their own selfishness. They are cute for a little while, but then the constraints that they place on the parents’ freedom for self indulgence make the parents resentful and sometimes neglectful. Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the subject.