Why are our personal reproductive choices so rarely informed by these Malthusian dynamics, let alone by the enormous personal burden involved in raising children? Because a nation/ethnicity/clan/family whose culture is comfortable with honest consideration of such questions does not grow as fast as one in which reproduction is seen as a crucial to identity and survival (both that of the group and that of the individual), and in which critical consideration of reproductive behaviors is rejected as perverse, judgmental or selfish.