I think it has a very simple explanation, but I doubt many people will agree with me.

I think it proves that humans simply do not have an inherent urge to procreate. Humans have the urge to have sex, sure, and for a long time having sex carried the consequence of having children, but they are not the same thing. When people are able to survive without children and have the CHOICE to not have children, many simply don’t want to.

In the past people needed many children, because many of them died before adulthood, and they needed the rest to take care of them in old age. Women didn’t have the right to say no and many needed husbands to provide for them, since they couldn’t own their own property or even have jobs. When men wanted sex, women had to comply and without birth control they automatically got pregnant, whether they wanted to or not.

I think not having the option to choose, people had children because… that’s just the way it was.

Now people have a choice. And we see what choices they make.

I’m sure many people are going to argue that it is too expensive to have kids, but let’s be honest here. Most humans on earth today are orders of magnitude more prosperous than 400 years ago, for example. If people really wanted kids, they’d have them.

Many people simply don’t want kids and maybe it’s time we finally acknowledge it.

There are only a few groups of people who still have lots of children: the very poor in underdeveloped countries and the very religious. And note that in many of these cases people don’t really have a choice.