I START THIS article with a disclaimer: my wife and I are childless by choice. I’d like to say we came to this decision through noble motives … a deep concern about overpopulation and its impact on the environment, for example. But that wouldn’t be true.

On the other hand, we didn’t reach this conclusion through entirely selfish reasons. We don’t possess a hunger for money and belongings that can only be sated through a lack of expensive offspring.