Raising children is full time, but both parents can and should be a part of it.
Motherhood by itself can be a full time job, if the partner and the society doesn't help. Like enough (and affordable) daycare centers, kindgartens, schools that take care of children after school hours, i.e. offer all-day care or activities.
And as you said "very successful engineers". What's about not so successful people, making good money but not being able to afford the options around them?
Yeah! So you are totally right, that statement was pretty sexist, but to really help couples raising children there is still a lot of work do to.
It is my belief that you are fundamentally misunderstand the issue.
You are right that there are studies showing that especially in Northern European countries where women receive more support in raising children have lower birth rates. But there was no statement as to why this is so (at least that was the last time I was interested in the topic, maybe there is something new?).
So yeah, I didn't feel confident enough to tackle that point of yours, sorry.
Someone has to raise children. I believe a loving, caring parent would want to do that themselves and or with their immediate family structure. I would not want strangers raising my children.
Is there any country on earth with a neutral or positive population growth where women are encouraged to pursue careers? As far as I know, not a single country that has a significant female career participation rate has a 2.1+ child rate per family outside of immigration.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/women-three-children_n_895517...
But it seems to me the issue is not that women are choosing to have careers, but that the work/career culture is not supporting women choosing to have children. So things like better maternity and paternity leave, allowing women to take years off, or part time without consequence to career, etc.
So takeaway should be, support our population by better supporting working mothers.
Let me know if you find one.
Countries that did all of those things as much as possible still fall below replacement rates, so no that isn't a sexist take that is just reality.
I'm not saying we should force women to not have careers, just that the women who have careers will eventually go extinct, which is their choice and I fully support that. I don't see a reason to force people to spread their genes. Instead of forcing career women to be unhappy at home with children, the women who are happy at home with children will eventually replace them.
A lot of these have been implemented in some European countries. They don't seem to be that effective on fertility rate given they are still below replacement.
So far the west is getting by on immigrants from countries it has destroyed. What happens when all of Africa falls below replacement rates in the next 15 years?
Keep in mind that _you_ will need doctors and nurses to keep you alive once you're past 60. At this point soylent green is the only retirement policy people with less than 10 million in the bank can expect.