Reply #28: Maintaining the population at the same level does nothing to

[MineralMan]

reduce it. I hear many people who have had children complaining about population issues. When I explain my own refusal to add to the world's population, I most often get called "selfish," for some reason I do not understand.

It's fairly easy to encourage people to control their reproduction when you are an example of doing just that. It's somewhat more difficult to encourage others if you have added to the population yourself, I think.

You have made a reproductive choice, as have I. When you say you'd "like to encourage most men not to father children," I wonder just how you will manage to do that. Will you show them photos of your two children? Will that work, do you think?

The dangers of overpopulation have been known for a very long time. Some people, learning of this in their youth, decided to act to reduce human reproduction. Others decided that, while it was important to slow population growth, their children were somehow different or that they were somehow more suitable to add additional mouths to feed to the planet.

So, please forgive me if I tell you that your encouragement to others will not convince them. You are, effectively, encouraging others to do what you would not do. There are times when I wish I had children and, now, grandchildren. My decision deprives me of that, yet I made it freely and with reason, since my goal was to do what I could to slow population growth.

It's good that you understand the problem. Perhaps you were not aware of the problem when you bore your own children. I have no idea. But don't ask others to do what you were unwilling to do, OK? That'd be really good.