Not without a fight.

We have too many damn people on the planet already.

Quite frankly, I think IVF is an incredibly selfish act. If you can't have kids, and you want some, why not adopt or foster?

Unfortunately it is much harder to adopt than you might think. The average time it takes to go through the adoption process in the U.S. is between two and seven years. And it's expensive, and you run into issues if the original parent ever wants their baby back. And the child may end up having some unknown and unforeseen defects that will make raising the child extremely difficult and expensive.

Fostering / Adopting older children is also really difficult, as the children are usually in the foster system for a reason, and have behavioral and other issues and sometimes the foster system itself is why the children have those issues. A friend of mine tried to adopt two brothers. The younger one was mostly fine, but the older one was violent, and eventually threatened his foster parents with a knife.

Given all that, IVF starts to make more sense. I'm not saying that fostering or adoption should never be done, but it is an entirely different thing than raising your own children.

The whole breeding thing for marriage is myopic, so I shall defer to the Flintstones:

Basically, just because that particular set of people don't have kids, doesn't mean they can't contribute to the welfare of their 'clan'. That still applies today, they can spoil their nieces and nephews, or cousins or second cousins, whatever. Or even if all they do is make their community a better place, that's fine too.

Unfortunately it is much harder to adopt than you might think. The average time it takes to go through the adoption process in the U.S. is between two and seven years. And it's expensive, and you run into issues if the original parent ever wants their baby back. And the child may end up having some unknown and unforeseen defects that will make raising the child extremely difficult and expensive.

Other than the "they might be defective" side-comment (hey, your natural born kids might too) this is very true. Same in the UK... any spotty kid of 18 can have a baby with a total stranger they met in a bar and neglect it to the point of abuse, but a mature, loving, financially stable couple have to jump through the longest series of hoops to check they're responsible choices.

I don't think it's expensive here but obviously in the US one has to pay for everything.

With the defects thing, its true that your own kids may have them, but a child given up for foster is more likely to be given up by someone who may have been abusing drugs, alcohol, etc. Who knows what kind of pre and post natal care was given.

I know, it's a bit callous, but it's rolling a different set of dice than if you have a kid yourself. On the other hand, if you have some lousy genetics that you don't want to spread*, adoption may be a great idea -- or IVF with someone else's egg or fertilized embryo.

*Note the use of 'you', as I don't want to get into what dictates lousy genes that shouldn't be spread, that's a dangerous road.

Unfortunately it is much harder to adopt than you might think. The average time it takes to go through the adoption process in the U.S. is between two and seven years. And it's expensive, and you run into issues if the original parent ever wants their baby back. And the child may end up having some unknown and unforeseen defects that will make raising the child extremely difficult and expensive.

Other than the "they might be defective" side-comment (hey, your natural born kids might too) this is very true. Same in the UK... any spotty kid of 18 can have a baby with a total stranger they met in a bar and neglect it to the point of abuse, but a mature, loving, financially stable couple have to jump through the longest series of hoops to check they're responsible choices.

I don't think it's expensive here but obviously in the US one has to pay for everything.

I have recently moved to the netherlands and my wife's extended family has lots of involvement with fostering. Basically you see families with 6+ fostered children and hear repeated themes like "they are really strict with food", "he gets the clothes from the next oldest male". You see, foster families receive money for looking after them so they basically turn it into a revenue stream and the kids are the expenses. They are not abused but they are not loved. On top of this the kinds of people who are drawn to this way of life are fundamental christians - forced indoctrination or out. No girlfriends, don't read fantasy books, no movies etc. Edit: there is probably some religous values overlap but it seams to help keep the costs down! And a good explaination to relatives who think its odd that the child lives on the bare essentials.

It is probably too strict in the UK but its too lax in NL.

I think fostering and adoption are quite different in the UK too, fostering is seen as a short-term solution to help out the government.

That fostering as a form of revenue stream is common here in the United States as well, it's a not very well regulated system, so foster parents who abuse their kids and/or trade them to other foster parents (who are actually paedo's or serial abusers), its not caught. It's a horribly broken system, with broken incentives.