From Frank Siegrist
The argument that people in developed countries who desire more children will become more numerous with each generation, although making sense superficially, seems a bit naive (14 September, p 31). Grass with legs could run away from cows; all grass should have legs by now; yet I still haven’t seen grass with legs.
People are programmed to want sex, and that’s how children arrive. Furthermore, once the children are here, we are programmed to take care of them. If we look at it this way, humans should have died out with the invention of contraception. This didn’t happen, so apparently we still miss children if they don’t appear spontaneously, and that’s why we plan them. So how many do we plan? One child might be lonely, so the answer must be two.
Is there an inborn tendency in some people to want more children? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Most third children I know of were “accidents”.
Lausanne, Switzerland
