[Antoninus]

They're not misguided. Their priorities are different.

I never said they weren't different. But different and misguided aren't antonyms.

there's nothing wrong with wanting your kids to have their own comfortable home, an interesting profession and the ability to afford a few of the luxuries in life.

Who said there was? My point was, the desire for material goods should be pretty low on a person's priority list. Much lower, certainly, than having children.

As for me, I chose to give my kids the greatest gift that any parent can give their children. No, not a car on their 16th birthday. Not a $100K education at a marxist indoctrination center. Not a nice little condo. Lots of siblings. There's nothing in the world like a brother or sister.

[durasell]

Not having a dog in this fight, I tend to look at it in a very cold blooded way. Someone can have one or two kids and give them all the little perks that help to assure a prosperous life, education, travel, a relative amount of financial security...or, they can have five or six kids and live on the financial edge -- no travel, no high end education, no financial security for the kids.

And people do fall over the edge every day -- I've seen it in ghettos where decent people go on public assistance just to feed the four or five kids. And then folks get down on them for having more kids than they can afford.