Your article (“Big is beautiful”, 18 July) brought to mind the only advice my father, one of 15, gave me when I married for the first time at the age of 48: “Big families are best.” It’s quite true, they are best. In the event, we had only four.The catch is that if we all had four, it would cause repeated doubling of the population, resulting in episodes of poverty, hunger, water shortage, conflict, and the migration of huge numbers of desperate people, as we can see in Africa, where the fertility rate is just over four children per woman. Only by most couples having small families can a few have four or more without suffering these troubles. Especially honoured should be those who have chosen to remain childless.  As the saying goes: “The child yo