How many kids do I actually want?

I'm sure at one point we've all sat back and thought about the number of children we want, I know I have. It seems that when I was a lot younger I always wanted a large number and as I got older and older that number slowly diminished. Why? Because of selfish reasons or things that were taught to me in school. My selfish reasoning was that I wouldn't be able to go out and have as much fun anymore as well as children just being too expensive. In school I always had a few teachers that taught about the pollution in the world and the carbon footprint we are creating. Not only pollution but the thought that one day we might run out of food and space for everyone on this planet! Let me tell you, this is entirely wrong. There was a man by the name of Dr. Ehrlich who put together a book called "Population Bomb" that talked about all these different ideas. In my class we discussed the idea of not having enough space on the planet for everyone and we talked about car rides or airplane rides. With both you almost always see wide open space for most of your trip and not a ton of cities or homes everywhere. As for food, we are producing more than we actually need! Farming equipment and technology has advanced tremendously that we actually have more than we need. Then there is the carbon footprint, there will always be people that have more cars than they actually need and so it's not about how many people are on the earth.

It is actually important that we do have children believe it or not. Through my religious background and economically it is crucial that we do have kids. If you think about it economically you see that the more people there are, the more brain power, the more people, the more creativity etc. How do you think there was such a huge technology movement in the 1950's? This was the time of the baby boomers, there was a generation that on average had about 3 kids per family in the United States. I was surprised at the number because I had always thought it was like 5 or 6 per family but there was a little known fact left out of this equation. Older people were no longer dying as early as they used to, medicine had advanced and  people were living longer. However, 3 kids per family is still a much higher average than it is today. There will eventually be a decline in the population and this will not only effect the economy but the future generation. As we discussed in my class we talked about how we are all a very social people and family is the foundation unit in which to build upon. If everyone is only having one child, eventually the family members that child will have will diminish drastically. No more aunts or uncles or siblings or cousins. We all connect with our family and it's a large part in how we learn to socialize. Which brings me back to our selfishness or in other words individualism, our society has become so focused on ourselves that we don't see the big picture. I would like to end with my testimony, I do believe that our Heavenly Father wants us to multiply and replenish the earth. I know that through Him ANYTHING is possible if we only have faith in Him. He will never hand us anything that we can't handle and we should have more children than what we're allowing ourselves to have. I'm not saying you or I have to have 5, 8, or 12 children, everyone is different and each of us will receive our own revelation through Heavenly Father on how many children to have. We have been given such a sacred gift in bringing down His spirit children so that they might have a body and go through this big journey of life.