In nearly every era prior to our own, the links between sex, marriage, and children were considered a given, not a state of affairs to be questioned, let alone altered. Not so today, as the widespread availability of contraception and related changes in mores have enabled men and women to engage in sex without commitment—and, in many cases, to pursue both sex and marriage without any necessary connection to parenthood.
In this brave new world, considerations of when to have children and how many children to have are a matter of much consternation. No longer do we all agree that parents can or even should have more than one or possibly two children, or even that it is a good thing to have children at all.
It is in this context that Timothy P. Carney has written his new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. His argument is multifaceted but easy to grasp. Carney sets out to study a very particular phenomenon: most Americans say they want more children than they actually end up having. Why is that?
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