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I think that is it. We have somewhat of a confirmation with Romania and Decree 770, which led to an increase in children (though that might have been temporary I'm not well versed in the history). I think there is no inherent desire to have children or if there is, it is far weaker than a lot of people think. And it makes sense, evolutionary. If you have a desire for self-preservation, a desire for the preservation of those close to you, a desire to nurture the young (once they are there, which also shows in seeing 'cuteness') and a desire for sex, then you don't really 'need' a desire for children directly, because the children will naturally follow from that chain of desires. It just fits with how evolution seems to works (I think at least), which often causes these daisy chains of things that work intermittently to cause something else.
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Thinking along those lines, a desire to "have children" may have even been bad - no built in stopping point. New child every year, resources overwhelmed...

There was a science fiction story I read about that once, an alien species that would die if they didn't give birth every year. I think they tried everything from hormone modification to mass baby dump pits but they couldn't maintain a stable society for longer than about fifty years when overpopulation killed everyone, so thrt just gave up.

Actually more than one, because I also read one about scientists deciphering messages from aliens who used the word for "baby eater" to mean "good"


The first one sounded familiar and I've definitely read the plot summary of this before, but not the book so I don't know if the rest of that description applies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye

The other one appears to be https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15744759-three-worlds-co... (summary and review at https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/up854p/three... )




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