h/t to Kate for linking to this article by Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and current columnist. He makes the case for having children astutely and persuasively without once descending into sentimentalism or ranting - two dangerously tempting positions when talking about a subject as emotionally charged as having children. His concluding comments were particularly interesting, if a little unnerving:
So what on earth will happen to my generation when we lie dying without the help of the children we somehow convinced ourselves we should not have? All we shall have is the comfort of strangers – nurses from cultures which, unlike our own, had the sense to think more of the future than the present.
And yes, as is only to be expected in an article published in a British newspaper, at least one commentator dismisses his common sense approach as "Catholic doctrinalism" (amazing what you can turn into an ism these days, isn't it?)
