Yves here. The hand-wringing about falling fertility is dishonest on many levels. No one wants to admit that turning babies into human beings (a project that does not always take) entails a lot of drudgery and dealing with bodily fluids. Women with the ability to foist the work onto others regularly do, as the pervasive use of wet nurses, nannies, and governesses among English and European aristocrats attests. Modern women, who seldom have spouse who will help all that much with what historically have been maternal duties, reduce their child-rearing labor by having few children by historical standard or none at all. Those who visit societies organized along traditional lines, like Bali, use a different approach, of extended families living in compounds, and children being substantially cared for by older adults and siblings of the parents.…