I'm not quite sure what you mean -- if you mean that having more children after 1 boy and 1 girl doesn't increase your costs, you're wrong. Talk to someone with 2 kids about their grocery bill for a week, and then talk to someone with 4 kids about their grocery bill. Shoes don't last forever to be handed down. If you have more kids, you need a bigger (and probably more expensive) vehicle to get them around in. Gone are the days when you could pile 4 kids in elementary school into the back of a VW Bug (and those were fun, weren't they? at least, as long as you didn't become a statistic).
If you're just talking about shelter costs, it can still be tight. Say you have a 3-bedroom house and 4 kids. If you've got 4 of one gender, or 2 and 2, room-sharing isn't that big a deal, but if it's a 1 and 3 gender split, you may have a problem.
I know housing is expensive in NYC. Having 3 kids to house in NYC isn't terribly easy, at least that's the impression I've gotten from conversations with Dan's cousin and his wife who live in NYC and who have 3 kids. If it's anything like that in Europe, I can see how smaller family size could result.
Julia
As I implied, it was time for bed for me. I meant it as it related to Russell's comment. I didn't mean to say there were no costs above 2 kids, of course you have to feed them and clothe them. But if he was talking cities, in Europe, I didn't see the need for personal transportation. And there is some limit where x kids in a room is too many, but people have been doing it for years, heck centuries, before now.
Kevin T. = VRWC Not arguing, just the fog of morning
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