Is it unethical to have more than 2 children?

You can keep your mental gymnastics thanks - as you are the only one using any. And your making stuff up too which you have been doing since the thread started. Making stuff up does not help anyone or anything here.

I do not know anyone with a wife or a mistress. I certainly have no such thing. We are a complete family / relationship all living together in one house here. We decided from early on in the relationship that we were going to aim for 4 children - they wanted 2 children each - and that is what we have done.

And I am not seeing any arguments on the thread against the ethics of this. Just a few misunderstandings of mathematics - a couple of fallacies - along with stuff simply being made up. But a single reason for considering more than 2 children unethical is still wanting. Do you actually have one?

@Wilmol You're getting unnecessarily personal now - I am not sure why. You started a thread asking about the ethics of having more than 2 children. Somehow my taking the side that there is nothing unethical about it has annoyed you to the point that you are now just making it about me - and flinging petty insults in my direction - and straw manning my relationship to make it sound like it is much different than it actually is. Why get personal here? Chill-ax.

I am not sure why you think I would have less time though. Economies of scale actually mean more adults in a relationship means you have more free time and money and resources. Not less. Or at least that's how our experience has been over the last 15+ years together. However if it makes you feel better I do not post all that much on boards and when I do it is usually when I am at work and am doing software testing which is a lot of pressing a button and waiting for results. Then I do indeed have time for discussing things on this forum. I have been on boards 12.5 years. That works out at less than 2 posts per day on average. Hardly prolific is it?

But to return to the topic of the thread - rather than drag it into a one sided and unwarranted personal abuse fest - The "Replacement Rate" is actually bigger than 2. And it is an average rate - not a per person rate. This means that to achieve the replacement rate in a society where some people have less than 2 children - or even no children at all - and where children die too - that some people will need to have more than 2 children. In my case it is 4.

So if we are using the replacement rate as a premise for the discussion - it would suggest that there is nothing at all wrong with having more than 2 children and in fact in some cases it is the right thing to do.

For me though I do not think the replacement rate is a good basis for discussing the ethics here however. Rather all of the factors a given parent - or set of parents - have for and against their ability to give a child a healthy upbringing should be considered before having any children at all - let alone subsequent children.

We as a family unit of three adults considered all of those factors and decided 4 was the right number for us. That was always our target and we have pretty much achieved that now. I will be getting the old "shave and a smell of bacon" procedure done after this I can assure you :-)

Nothing mentioned on this thread so far calls the ethics of that into question or suggests my fathering 4 children was the wrong thing to do. I am not sure why this fact annoys you to the point you need to get abusive and personal?