Oddbean

Yes absolutely, and this is the role we need women to play to build strong societies. No different to fiat forcing doctors or engineers to become part-time investors so they don’t lose their wealth - diluting people’s attention from what they are best at and where they provide the most value to the extended order has a net negative impact on everyone else in that order.

I read between your lines and no. The whole career-life-family system is broken, not just for women. The world is not better off when mothers have only the mother and wife role to play, while fathers and husbands are trapped in a system where they are kept from their families much of the time working. Balance is needed. Mothers and fathers are both vital to children and mothers and fathers both should have lives apart from their children as well, including meaningful work.

There’s no lines to read between. I didn’t say women need to exclusively be mothers, I said that is where they need to focus for the extended order to most benefit. For them to be good mothers they’re going to need to have other interests which is no different to men who should be the breadwinners but will not be well-rounded fathers if they have nothing outside of their work - one-dimensional people do not make good parents. But the idea that people can do multiple things and excel at each is nonsense. We should be moving to a world of hyperfocus where each of us devotes the majority of our productivity to what we are best at (outside interests should be leisure) and realistically we need women to be best at raising the next generation to extend that rather than deferring motherhood or palming it off to the state as that is what perpetuates the very system you identify as broken.