How many children is too many?

I did a Google search for this question recently and was stunned by the overwhelming popular answer: two is too many. Or maybe three. Certainly more than that is too many.

Points made in some comments I read:

People with a lot of kids are selfish and irresponsible.

The world is already over populated and people should aim for 0% population growth.

Please, give me a break!

I'll tell you what selfish is. Selfish is blowing your 50k-100k salary on frivolous material possessions. Selfish is having a full freezer and refrigerator while watching starving third-world children on the news.

And how about those starving children? Why are they starving? Because there are too many of them? Or because the the governments of their nations strive to keep the populations uneducated? Maybe because even when first world nations do give charitable donations, those government officials keep most (or all) of the gifts for themselves?

What about the agricultural industry that has managed to place patents on enhanced seed and grain while pushing the original, natural seed and grain almost into extinction? So that if a third world nation wanted or could grow its own grain, they have to purchase the seed from the patent holder? In North America, private farmers are sued all the time when some stray, patented seed migrates to their fields.

Fresh water requires an infrastructure to clean waste and direct the water where it is needed. But it doesn't matter if your nation has one billion people or twenty billion people, if the government does not want to spend money on that system, or they are so corrupt that no private industry can afford to stake a claim, than any number of people becomes too many.

No, parents of large families are not guilty of selfishness (ok, I'm sure some are) but rather they are guilty of living a fantasy where people are free to live how they want to live.

Land of the free? More like, land of the gotta-have-it-alls and want-mores.

What these population control freaks often neglect to share in their published comments or articles is the number of parents who look back and wish they had dared to produce more children.

Even church is not a safe harbor for Christian families who would like to have more children. But the number of Christians who wish they could have more is steadily growing.

The truth is, having a large family is time-consuming. Do you have hobbies and self interests? A pile of kids is going to change that. You can still have hobbies, you can even get away once in a while for some quiet time. The problem is that many parents just can't fathom sacrificing for a family and when they see another set of parents who appear to be successfully raising lots of kids, jealousy abounds.

It's funny how all these educated people say we need to control the population and reduce growth. Vasectomies should be handed out to everyone. What a bunch of slackers. Here's some science for you, straight out of the Theory of Evolution, if you don't use it, you lose it.