The task for advocates of freedom is to inquire beyond the specific bias against large families and discern the root ideology involved. It will prove to be quite familiar. Any consideration of the freedoms involved in choosing family size necessarily involves the larger issue of ownership and property rights. Even to question the fact that the ownership and responsibility for children vests exclusively in their parents once would have seemed superfluous. This concept is no longer tenable.
Society pays an even larger share of the cost of raising and educating children.
The idea of ownership is surely affected by the thrust of the saying that 'He who pays the piper calls the tune. And understandably so, since the ownership and control of private property is integral to a free society and therefore an inherent enemy of central planning. One thinks of the possibility of raising the minimum age of marriage, of imposing stiff penalties for illegitimate pregnancy, of compulsory sterilization after a fifth birth. We see, then, that in order for a bureaucracy to gain its desired position of pseudo-parent and thereby the power to control family size, it must begin by usurping property rights over children. Malthus and Human Capital As alluded to earlier, the barbs directed at prolific parents generally are launched from the various elements of the population control movement.