I realize that until very recently, many people had large families as a matter of course, because there was not very effective birth control (other than condoms and abstinence), and people just took it for granted that having children was the consequence (and price) of having sex.
Based on how nasty my parents' marriage was, and especially based upon how crappily my father treated women, I never had much of a desire to have children. I didn't want to end up with someone who was as nasty as he was. He may have wanted sex with women, but he didn't really like or respect women.
I was NOT about to hitch myself to someone like him, have a bunch of kids, and then not be able to extricate myself because (like my mother) I had no job skills with which to take care of myself and/or children--my mother realized things were not working out within a year of marrying him, but chose to stay because she didn't have much in the way of job skills, and for other reasons (none of them good).
I have always made sure to have marketable job skills, so that I would not feel driven to put up with someone's crap just because he was feeding and sheltering me. In fact, I have had more than one relationship in which I paid more of the bills.
I also didn't want to be a single mother. Despite having had an ogre for a father, I didn't want to just go off and have a kid by myself. I think that kids need fathers too.
So... if it works out for some people to have dozens and dozens of children, it's their choice--as long as they're not doing it on my dime. It wasn't my choice, and I am exceedingly thankful that no one is forced to have children if they don't want to.
Very large families are extremely unusual these days. Most folks have gotten used to their luxuries; they limit the number of kids they have so they don’t have to sacrifice too much of their good life for them.