And that’s where he get to the real problem (I think.) Not only were the dwarves not great at making new dwarves, they had some really horrible luck in the later ages with keeping the existing dwarves alive. Which would definitely affect not only birth rates, but survival rates as well. Most especially in the later half of the Third Age, the dwarves don’t have a great track record of finding safe, stable homes. You’re not wrong about the effects of being constantly on the move.
Tolkien actually said “It is because of the fewness of women among them that the kind of the Dwarves increases slowly, and is in peril when they have no secure dwellings.” But he’s talking about slow increase, not about decrease - so there must be more than just the gender imbalance at work here. So it’s unlikely that many families were reaching that 3-children-quota. The major underlying cause is, of course, the ridiculous gender imbalance among the dwarves - less than a third were women! So, whereas men and elves would need to have about 2 children in order to maintain population numbers, dwarves would automatically have to have at least 3! (Probably more, since it’s also said that not all women married anyway.) Yet, it’s also said that dwarves didn’t have many children - that to even have 4 was considered unusual.
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