Why is the krogan genophage dilemma portrayed so inconsistently?

Question

The ethical problems with the Krogan stem from their massive birth rate: an adult female who lives for centuries pops out ~1 surviving child per Solar year and ~999 that don't survive, or a total fertility rate (TFR) in the triple digits. After the Rachni Wars, the Krogan population exploded and they temporarily became an expansionist empire until the Turians unleashed the genophage.

However, this explanation runs into several inconsistencies and logistical problems.

1. Their total fertility rate accounting for child mortality would be in the triple digits; for comparison, the highest human TFR is 6.89 in Niger. Someone needs to raise all those offspring and teach how to speak and use tools and so forth. Communal child rearing could never account for that many offspring.
2. The writing conflicts on their biology: Krogans are said to both lay eggs and experience pregnancies at different points. The numbers listed above make those options physically impractical and would require mass spawning like fish or amphibians.
3. The game uses two conflicting social portrayals of the krogan depending on whether it is arguing for or against the genophage, even though the two portrayals are irreconcilable and their rate of population growth is simply impossible without a hive-like caste system like the Rachni or Salarians.
4. Within the story itself outside the Codex, the Krogan are portrayed raising a small number of children exactly like humans rather than the dozens you would expect; presumably so players would sympathize despite the absurd numbers listed above.

I could accept an explanation where the Salarians used their tech to raise massive armies that would otherwise have died in childhood; resulting in a massive imbalance in the krogan population which, combined with the extreme poverty of their home world, led to a rise in nationalism and subsequent imperialism. But a TFR in the triple digits is blatantly absurd, ruins my suspension of disbelief and invalidates the dilemma because obviously curing the genophage would be out of the question.

Answer 1

There is relatively little information on the biology and sociology of Krogan young, other than the facts of the birth rate and the genophage.

If you're trying to apply real-world thinking to the Krogan, the best analogy you could make is that of an invasive species (no pun intended). The krogan spent most of their history under one kind of pressure or another that made the vast birth rate vital to the species survival. When that pressure was removed (and it was removed twice), and the race expanded, it always ended in disaster for the point of expansion.

The discussion over how Krogan could handle that many young is limited by lack of information. Grunt, the only slight example we have, is flawed - he was engineered into maturity. The most we can determine from his lack of rearing is that Krogan instincts may drive a large part of their nature; he had a temper and a need to find a clan to belong to, without any of that being taught.

Such a discussion may be nearly useless regardless; for most of their history, Krogan death rates were as extreme as their birth rates. Tunchanka, their homeworld, was a massive death trap, and despite the inherent Krogan resiliency (redundant organs, food storage, massive physical build) the birth rate was the key to their survival. When their society developed enough to produce modern weapons and guarantee their survival, the resulting population boom became their downfall. Krogan had nothing left to compete against as a species except themselves. Competition between clans became nuclear war and killed most of the planet, and the new homeworld deathtrap was other Krogan. The in-game Codex put it best:

Until the invention of gunpowder weapons, "eaten by predators" was still the number one cause of krogan fatalities. Afterwards, it was "death by gunshot".

When the Krogan were found and uplifted into interstellar society in order to fight the Rachni, the Salarians failed to take that history into account. Once the Rachni were gone, Krogans had the whole galaxy to expand into rather than killing each other on Tunchanka for scraps. They settled anywhere they could, and it didn't much matter to them who was there first. This became the Krogan Rebellions. It wasn't an abandonment; The Salarians miscalculated, and had given them the tech to wage war and join Council space, but had not given them time or tools to adapt their society around the idea of coexistence.

This doesn't really shed direct light on the problem you have with the birth rate, but there's a few things to consider. First, Krogan young probably need to start already fairly hardy. It is unlikely there is much, if any, time when a newborn Krogan could be considered helpless as would be normal in a human newborn. The high birth rate wouldn't affect anything if young couldn't contribute to their own survival. Second, group rearing would be a necessity, and the clan structure would come into play here. Warrior training does lend itself to large groups, although the turnover would be extreme (what isn't, here), but that setup would buy space against the harsh environment for thinkers to do their thing and advance the society.

This is mostly gap-filling speculation, unfortunately, as the game spends more time studying the morality of the genophage (Mordin seems to conclude "necessary, but our fault") rather than studying the logistics of the species it affects. It is strongly implied by the in-game lore however, and the ultimate answer may be "the logistics have to work somehow, because they exist in the setting".