The trouble with these articles is that they actually affect some folks' lives. No doubt, for years to come, there will be couples sitting there and planning out how they want to space their families based on a half-remembered article that they read in the New York Times one day about how they'll ruin their kids' lives if they're spaced less than three years apart. Some of these couples will no doubt go on to delay their second child until they wind up infertile. Others will probably delay their second child until they're so old that the second child winds up with Down's syndrome (that being vastly more common for older than younger mothers). And basically, it's just another one of those random factors that really don't matter much for middle-class parents to agonize over (while lower-class parents keep pumping out a dozen crack babies to get more welfare).