Averaging more than 2 children attempts to grow the population at an exponential rate. This attempt fails because we are always at the limit. We are generally always at the limit because the exponential growth happens very fast relative to how long humans have existed in each separate environment. When a population is at a stable limit, the child mortality rate is forced to rise such that the extras above an average of two will not live to be an adult. For example, if we average three children, then one in three children will not survive to adulthood. If we average 2.5, then one in five children will die. The formula for the child mortality rate is (x-2)/x where x is the number of children we average.

This simple formula shows that we determine the death rate of children by how many we average. Unfortunately this formula is relatively unknown because for the past several hundred years we have increased the limits at exponential rates. This has fooled many into believing that we have never been at the limits. When the limit increases, the child mortality rate will be lower and the connection to the birth rate is not obvious.

Even though we have managed to expand the limits by making fertilizers, better crop varieties, refrigeration, and transportation to name just a few, we have not expanded it as fast as our births have demanded. When a population is at the limit the population experiences pockets of high child mortality with low adult life expectancy and these symptoms have always been present in the world human population.

The following list shows the methods of birth control ranked in order of decreasing preference. Every society, country, and religion has the same ranking. Infanticide is worse than abortion, which is worse than modern birth control, and worse than abstinence. Averaging too many children is worse than all of these.

• Abstinence
• Modern birth control - such as condoms and birth control pill.
• Abortion
• Infanticide
• Averaging too many children

The different societies and religions teach different rules about what types of birth control are acceptable and what are not. Some allow abortion, and some do not allow modern birth control. If a group averages too many children, the members of that group must encourage the use of more effective birth control methods.

Every society believes that one of our highest responsibilities is to provide for our children. It is fundamentally impossible to prevent the death of children when we average too many. Each individual is part of many different groups, for example your immediate family, your extended family, your church, your town, and your country. Therefore we each have a responsibility to ensure that none of our groups average too many children.

The world is already overpopulated, so we must ensure that we average less than 2 for the foreseable future.