I recently listened a book called Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk, and quite enjoyed it. The author's purpose was to explore the reasons why some small number of women (about 5% of the child-bearing population) choose to have a larger than average number of children. This is especially relevant as the low birth rate around the world gets more and more attention. Governments all over the world are wondering how to increase the birth rate and are exploring all kinds of incentives. South Korea's birth rate is at an astonishing .748 births per woman in 2024. The birth rate for the United States last year was less than 1.6 births per woman, a new low. Pakaluk's research was done jointly with a BYU professor who has 7 children. Pakaluk is an economics professor at Catholic University and has 8 children herself in addition to raising the 6 children her husband had when they married after his first wife died. They conducted ...