I've handed in the draft chapter I wrote for State of the World 2010. Now I'm trying to find time to take a close look at the comments my colleagues have made in the text.

The best way to summarize my message, I think, is that I'm not a believer in "promoting" a small child norm. (I'm not much of a promoter of anything, truth be told, except sustainability itself, the beauty of traditional Irish music, and the importance of population growth in human life generally.) Rather than promoting small families, I believe that what institutions can do in influencing culture (the book will be about cultural transformation) is promote the conditions through which small families will arise solely and spontaneously out of the realized desires of couples themselves, and especially those of women.