This summer, 28-year-old Anthony Shepherd and his wife of seven
years, Cynthia, will fly from China, where they've been teaching
English since 2009, to Wisconsin for a vacation. In addition to
relaxing, catching up with friends, and attending her brother's
wedding, they plan on stopping by a vasectomy clinic. The
People's Republic may be notorious for its one-child policy, but
the Shepherds' attitude toward reproduction is even more
stringent. Call it the zero-child policy.  Even before the
Shepherds left Asheville, North Carolina, for Sichuan province,
they'd made their life decision based on the experiences of
their "childed" friends. "We watched them struggle to pay bills,
find suitable apartments or houses to fit their families, and
work at jobs they didn't like because they needed the
insurance," Cynthia says. So she and Anthony enthusiastically
took a pass on parenthood, an increasingly common decision for
America's couples.  Considering the state of the economy, it
should come as no surprise that the r