I dont plan on having any children, so it probably will be more to do with what my wife would want.
There was a time that I wanted to have as large a family as possible, I mean like as many as would be physically possible but I think I've aged out of that possibility.
Objectively, I think that people should have as many children as necessary to carry on the family name or secure whatever legacies there are. It is more theory than reality but I tend to think of this in a sense of a family being like one of the houses in Dune, I dont think of this idea as being about privilege or power. I think of this as being about tradition, posterity, order and planning. So much of life at present appears to be entirely by accident and I think this is in part what makes it terrible for people at a personal or societal level, accident and chaos are never going to be preferable to the alternatives.
Its a fact that with rising prosperity family size decreases, it is not simply a matter of you dont need as many children to "push the plow" because now you have a machine to do that, its also about individual and social expectations, woman's liberation (which properly understood is also men's liberation). This is why some of the Malthusian ideas about the "the poor, they are too many" is flawed or Spencer's ideas about the "perishers" is mistaken too.
