The Family: Stay Single

Population planners hope that, at least in the U.S., pills and other contraceptive devices will soon be available to every couple that wants them. Yet even then, the nation's population will keep growing at an alarming rate. The reason is simple but often overlooked, according to Dr. Roger O. Egeberg, HEW's Assistant Secretary for health and scientific affairs. "The typical American family," he told a Planned Parenthood conference last week, "will elect to have three children, not two."

Egeberg proposed a radical solution, involving nothing less than a change in prevailing attitudes about marriage and children. The notion that everyone should marry and raise a family was important in an era when infant-mortality rates were high and life expectancy short. Now it is important, he warned, to remove the stigma that society attaches to remaining unmarried and to somehow change the feelings of comfort and security that many Americans derive from having large families. "This is going to shock a lot of people," he conceded, "but we have to get the discussion started."