Indulge Me

I can't remember exactly where, nor exactly who, as it's been a couple of weeks (I think) since that post. (Brian, was it you?), but somebody brought up,as a tangent, the topic of breeding levels in the not-so-developed world in comparison to the more-developed world, with the suggestion being that it may be the higher breeding levels that keep the poorer nations the way they are.

I want to discuss this a little bit, but I think we need to determine what has come first in the developed nations: increased wealth/technology/modernisation, or decreased breeding,in order to identify a proper cause and effect.

I going to go with the idea that wealth is the cause behind lower breeding rates. There seems to be a pattern of larger families throughout history when these families were beneficial to the breeders (like agricultural families).
But the industrial revolution didn't put and end to 4-8 child families. The cities were full of them. As was my own family.

Breeding patterns didn't change in the developed world until after the end of World War Two, and the rise of socialistic governments as the accepted standard.
Though I cannot speak for others, I know what prevented me from having more than the two kids I did have: economics. So much of my labor goes to taxes, coupled with the 'unseen' regulations that dictate safe housing standards, city codes as to how many may live in a room,etc... the combination of factors made every additional child twice as expensive as the previous.
By contrast: in prior times, every additional child was only a fraction as costly as the one who came before it. And in agricultural societies, an extra mouth came with two hands that paid their own way.
(Try to rent an honest apartment when you have six kids.)

Also, wealth creates the expectation of greater expectation. In today's advanced society, if every child isn't furnished with his own bedroom,cell phone, stereo, computer,and cable television then something is wrong with his life. He'll end up on Oprah in twenty years bemoaning his childhood of poverty. (While both his parents worked full time jobs to provide those luxuries that have now become necessities.)

What I'm saying, I guess, is that the leisure modern life provides, along with the governmental/social structure does something to us as a civilization. Where families were once seen as the center and purpose of our lives, they are now practiced as optional phases of a life.

I'd like to have your input on this.