Between them, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have as many children — 12 — as there were tribes of Israel. Ron Paul has five of his own, and in an early debate, perhaps unwilling to be outdone by Michele Bachmann’s fostering of dozens, Paul boasted that when he worked as a physician he delivered “4,000 babies.” 

There’s nothing wrong with big families, of course. But the smug fecundity of the Republican field this primary season has me worried. Their family photos, with members of their respective broods spilling out to the margins, seem to convey a subliminal message that goes far beyond a father’s pride in being able to field his own basketball team. What the Republican front-runners seem to be saying is this: We are like the biblical patriarchs. As conservative religious believers, we take seriously the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply.

Especially worrisome is the inevitable corollary to that belief: Women should put their natural fertility first — before their brains, before their ability to earn a living, before their independence — because that’s what God wants.

This shouldn’t be news to anybody, but apparently, in 2012, it is. Family planning is good for families. In an economy where nearly all mothers work, where their ability to earn money doesn’t merely allow them the occasional splurge at the department store but actually pays the mortgage and the college bills, the romantic idealization of biblically abundant families is a retrograde dream.

Smaller families allow everyone in the family to be healthier and better educated. Healthy, well-educated people live longer and are more prosperous than those who are not. In the poorest parts of the developing world, the average woman has six children; in the richest parts, that average woman has three. This is the reality, Mitt Romney the outlier. As a man who earns $20 million a year, he can afford to have as many children as he can manage to conceive.

I am the first person to say children are a miracle, a blessing, a gift from God. But I also thank God that I live in a time and place where I can get up every morning and go to work, and with the money I earn help feed and educate my child. I’m guessing that if you asked them, most American women, liberal or conservative, would vote with me.