Honey, We Shrunk the Family

Timothy P. Carney’s Family Unfriendly explores plunging American fertility and how to get out of the baby bust.In 204 B.C., the Romans imported a new foreign cult. When the barge bringing the cult statue to Rome got stuck in the shallow waters of the Tiber, an aristocratic young woman, Claudia Quinta, miraculously pulled the rope to draw it in single-handedly. As her name tells us, she was the fifth daughter in her family.The reason this story first stood out to me years ago is the same re