Any public official who took steps to restrict the birth rate would leave themselves open to charges of genocide under international law, that should be the end of the discussion.

"Malthus was wrong, Darwin was a fraud!"...say it twenty times when you get up in the morning ;)

Yabby,
Maternal urges satisfied with four children. That is a natural phenomenon no-one can argue with. What we can argue about is when those maternal urges cause others to carry the burden. i.e. people have more children then they can afford be financially, socially, from a feeding point of view etc. We should then expect it as just as natural that others shouldn't have to foot the bill. You look after yours & I look after mine is how it should be. Unfortunately, people can have one kid after another & taxpayers fork out for them. I see young women having four kids & getting free health care, free child care, free private schooling, free travel & mum spends all day in the Pub playing pools & Keno while grandma looks after the children & collecting some sort of child support assistance as well. As long as we don't make people responsible for their actions others should not be made responsible for others as well. A little natural selection would do a grand job.

And so the recommended means to cut our fertility rate is...?
Peter Hume,
It's what we can afford without planning on relying on the taxpayer to constantly fork out.

Inidividual, I agree with you. Capitalism is a great contraceptive
and if people had to pay all the costs of having children, they
would have less.

IMHO parenthood is not about altruism and sacrifice at all, its
about people satisfying their own genetic urges. The author of this
article to her credit, was honest enough to admit it.

Well, um, yes, nicco.

>>...it is simply impertinent for Pericles to snidely imply that she has not done, herself, what she suggests that others might do.<<

I did wonder about that, when I mused...

>>...presumably Ms Goldie is not advocating that every Australian couple raise five children, as she has done.<<

Are you suggesting that she is, in fact, advocating precisely that?

But leaving that aside for a moment, there is nothing in the article of a practical nature. It is always "someone else" who has to take action, and those actions are never specified.

Never.

And for very good reason - they are all quite ugly.

Quite the quickest way (but don't tell anybody, because they will look at you very strangely) is for the rich countries to stop sending food and medical assistance to the poorer countries.

"Oh, but we couldn't do that!"

So instead we have the Ms Goldies of the world wagging their fingers disapprovingly saying "I really wish you wouldn't do that, you know". There simply is no humane way to control population. Because, as the author herself points out, there are these things called "maternal urgings" on the female side (I'm not quite sure what the male equivalent phrase is, but it is far more direct, and somewhat indifferent), the only viable control methods involve coercion.

The only means that Mother nature has provided involves a combination of education and wealth. Which ultimately enables a form of personal choice, which is in the vast majority of cases also a selfish one.

A very persistent straw man indeed.

If Pericles had read the article to the end, he would have noticed that Ms Goldie quite strongly states that the options "... in these days of coming difficulties are zero, one or two children. If you can't bear it, adopt a child who really does need love and a home."

In other words, yes, Pericles, she is suggesting that others might do as she has done.

More straw, where Pericles attempts to suggest that any possible actions are "ugly". Firstly, the actions proposed by Ms Goldie, to provide love and a home to children of others, are far from ugly. Secondly, a number of other posters have pointed out solutions to the problem that are far from ugly (Yabby: "capitalism is a great contraceptive") and the truism that the education and emancipation of women is the first and major step in lowering the number of unwanted pregnancies. Not ugly at all.

Thirdly, unless Pericles is correct in his Panglossian view of the world, the probable alternatives are worse than ugly. They are catastrophic.

Enough, already. I have wasted enough time on this non-debate.