[vasiliys]

The sentiment is correct, but even an average member of society who has to choose between two children is better off with the college grad than the incessant consumer whose cortex hasn't folded yet.

The only valid explanation I can think of for our obsession with babies is evolutionary - you need some overkill hormonal persuasion to bond with babies. So every individual who has gone through such a period has some understanding of other individuals' love for babies - they're being empathetic when they hear someone say "I love my baby more than anything".

[avar]

I think both you and the parent I was replying to are guilty of the same fallacy: transposing economic value on the individual level to society at large.

People at large want to have kids, they want to not die from treatable illnesses. Even when those two goals are at odds with optimal economic realities societies will still try to attain them, because we build societies and economies as a means to an end to attain our goals, we don't live our lives purely to satisfy economic efficiencies.

We're an organism that's the product of billions of years of evolution, all organisms try to spread their genes to the next generation. To say that you're better off with one child who's a collage graduate than two who aren't might be true economically, but ignores what's fundamentally driving us all forward as an organism.

Does anyone really think the primacy of reproduction can be superseded by some clever economic theories?