If Nina Funnell doesn't want children then that should be interpreted that she fully intends to rely on our children supporting her in her later years.

How do you grow vegetables? Do you throw a few seeds in some scraggy patch of dirt and instruct them of their productive duty? Do you subsequently berate them for their failure and get your produce from a shop?

Cornflower is correct in pointing out that the decision of women to have children might relate to economic factors. It then seems ironic that politicians are encouraging a higher birthrate with their utterances, yet the policy of high immigration and the severe restrictions on land development are encouraging the opposite.

And it is nice to see the aging calamity being questioned. Surely with forty years to find some answers it might be possible to think of actual solutions: More kids and more migrants delays the problem a few years, but then you have an even bigger problem to deal with. A healthier lifestyle and better treatments for chronic diseases could make an aging population a non-issue.

Assuming Nina is reporting things accurately, it seems both men offering themselves up as leaders of the nation have managed to prick the thin skins of some of our women folk with their homilies.

With luck it means they are fairly matched in that area, and the competition will instead focus on matters of substance.

Sorry, I was just day-dreaming. Fat chance, I know.

We probably could get the fertility rate up even more, up above replacement level, if we gave people even more encouragement to have children, but why would this be a good idea? As of last June, the ABS puts Australia's fertility rate at just below 2 children per woman. Replacement level is 2.05 or 2.06 for a developed country like Australia. Even a very modest rate of net immigration would keep the population stable with current fertility rates. There is no evidence that there are any economic or other benefits to the average person from further population growth and considerable evidence of environmental damage, growing inequality and restrictions on personal freedom, water shortages, etc., etc.

As Cornflower said, Rudd's Big Australia policy, his lust for more and more people, is driving this, essentially to please the business elite, who want bigger markets and more sales, a cheap, compliant work force, and easy profits from urban real estate. This graph from Club Troppo shows the share of national income going to the top 1% of the population since 1900 in several countries, including Australia. Note that it tends to be larger in the high population growth countries and that the US was most equal when it had essentially zero net immigration (from 1924 to 1965).

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2006/08/24/policy-and-perhaps-culture-matter-for-income-distribution/

Rudd may also pick up votes from the religious fundamentalists, who tend to believe that God wants more human souls, at any cost to human welfare or the environment. He may even share their beliefs.

Replacement level is 2.05 or 2.06 for a developed country like Australia.
Divergence,
I suppose the question we must ask ourselves is, if we don't have children then whose children do we expect to give a hoot about us ? We see some of this happening now. Our pension & social security funds are seriously jeopardised by people who didn't contribute & now we are told by Government to work longer to make up for the shortfall & hopefully fall off the perch before we get to claim anything. Maybe I'm more odd than I think but I can't envisage the next generation worrying too much about us in ten years from now.

Anyone who has children for political reasons or to care for the aged or to keep Australia populated or to continue the human race has children for the wrong reasons.Children are not tools or solutions or expediencies to problems that exist in countries or economies.

There is only one good reason to have a child and that is because you want to have the closest possible relationship with a child. Those who become parents for any other reason should never become parents and anyone who suggests any other reason for having children including politicians should be called to account.

We should have children for the right reasons or not have them for the right reasons and any economic or social problems should be addressed on their own terms. If we cannot solve our problems without destroying the integrity of parent-child relationships then it does not say much for our capacity as human beings.

Having children only for the right reasons or refraining for the right reasons may well lead to solving some of those social and economic problems but having children as a means to an end other than a loving relationship will only exacerbate those problems.