"I Dunno, Give 'Em Minivans?"

There's a small moral panic about the fertility rate, for two reasons: society needs worker bees, and keeping families barefoot and pregnant keeps 'em NPC'ing. So how can Molly have three kids?

Numerically, we’re seeing a lot more 1-kid, 2-kid, and zero-kid families for a variety of reasons, including perceived financial insecurity, lack of help from society and/or your own parents, infertility, people barely date anymore unless you’re Chad or Tyrone from Hinge and you’re probably looking for something other than dating, later marriage age, people are unhealthy, etc. This has been detailed before. You can throw narratives around “younger people are more selfish” into this arena too. That obviously varies by person and couple.

Quick math lesson: if you are two people producing a baby, and eventually you believe you will both die (death and taxes, man), then having two kids is not replacement rate, because you are 2 people (+2), but when you die (-2), all you do is replace the two kids (+2). There’s no net gain to society until you hit three kids, because then 2–2+3=1. That’s more than zero. A lot of two-kid families tell you constantly “We did our part!” and while, yes, they did a lot, it’s not replacement rate.

So like, for people having 3+ kids, what are the reasons? Could we learn anything there?