[jarjoura]

Who is "they" here?

Having a single-income parent in a two-parent home was the norm for most of US history. It's also still the norm outside of the US. Where is the evidence that children are worse off because both parents work? Kids (5+) barely spend any time at home during a typical work day, so I'm not sure what "they" are correct about.

How is it objectively correct that women should, on average, have children earlier? Sorry, but this is purely a subjective statement and women are free to agree or disagree with that statement.

Having been raised by my grandparents, I personally believe the only secret for success is to show up for children, and love them and provide them a stable environment to thrive in. Everything else is just window dressing.

[watwut]

> Having a single-income parent in a two-parent home was the norm for most of US history.

You dont really have income and non income on a household farm. You have patriarch making decisions and everybody else working. This included slave owning farms where she had managing/organizing responsibilities.

Also, women in lower classes needed income and did worked for it. They did not had professional occupations and they were responsible for children, so it was things that fit into those boundaries - low income non professional work. But it was not really done for funsies. Then again, kids as small as 5 were left to handle by themselves and older kids were supposed to contribute.

It is really incomparable to being stay at home parent now, isolated and literally having nothing useful to do except existing and playing.

[TimorousBestie]

> Who is "they" here?

Sorry, I thought it was clear from the context that these are widely-held, American right-wing opinions that I happen to agree with.

> How is it objectively correct that women should, on average, have children earlier?

There are a few specific birth defects that are more common in younger mothers but most become much more common as the mother ages, and the overall risk of complication & death increases with maternal age.

> Having been raised by my grandparents, I personally believe the only secret for success is to show up for children, and love them and provide them a stable environment to thrive in. Everything else is just window dressing.

That’s a great sentiment but of little practical use in deciding policy.

[jarjoura]

Ah, sorry, I guess I'm not sure what it is you're actually debating needs to be fixed. Are children being born today with more birth defects and we (society) now want to concern ourselves with the issue that if parents want to have children, they need to plan for it and start earlier? Is that what a supposed objective policy would try to address?

Men also have a clock and birth defects are known to go up the older they are. So this can't be limited to women regardless of policy decisions.

I'm also not sure there could be any actual conversative government policy that could fix what is ultimately a financial incentives problem. Lots of parents would start earlier if they were able to have things like home ownership and space to raise kids in, and education systems that don't skew towards needing upper middle class levels of access to. Any potential new idea with any realistic long term fix would end up looking quite progressive and in our current hostile environment become a no-go for any conservative political appointee.