Across much of the world, the family has been steadily shrinking, as couples increasingly raise one or two children where previous generations raised many. In my view, this trend is, on balance, a positive one, notwithstanding certain genuine drawbacks.
The arguments in its favour are substantial. When parents have fewer offspring, they are able to lavish more time, attention and financial resources on each, enabling their children to secure a better education and healthcare and, consequently, more promising futures. Smaller families also ease the burden on the environment and the economy, since a more slowly expanding population draws less heavily on finite natural resources. Perhaps most significantly, women are liberated from a lifetime consumed by the rearing of large broods and are freer to pursue education, careers and aspirations of their own, an advance of considerable social value.
The trend is not, however, without cost. As families contract, populations age, and societies may eventually find themselves with too few workers to sustain a growing cohort of elderly citizens, straining pension and healthcare systems. Children raised without siblings may, in some instances, experience a loneliness that larger households would have spared them, and may find it harder to acquire the give-and-take that growing up alongside brothers and sisters naturally teaches.
On balance, nonetheless, I am persuaded that the benefits prevail, for the tangible improvement in the quality of life enjoyed by both children and parents is difficult to overstate. Although smaller families undeniably pose long-term demographic challenges, I regard the shift as a broadly positive development, provided that societies plan sensibly for the ageing populations it entails.