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
