Brave New World (and probably many other sci-fi) basically skips this problem entirely by having babies be mass-produced in bottles.

Since we are already on a tangent:

In one part of Brave New World they bring up that they tried to do more automation, but people got restless without the drudgery. In another part, they bring up that they tried to have a society with only Alphas, but they didn't want to do the drudgery.

I wonder why they never tried combining both?