The man was born in 1907. That is so long ago that he was discharged from the Navy because he caught Tuberculosis in the days before antibiotics were developed.
Of course people raised that long ago were taught things that we find ridiculous today.
Casting off those sorts of cultural prejudices and thinking for yourself became a theme in his later works.
Apparently he didn't take his own themes to heart, then
That some people do want to be parents?
Someone else mentioned The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, a detective story Heinlein wrote in 1942.
The detective's wife is called out in the story as being the brains of the outfit, a very progressive notion in 1942.
Exceptionally competent women have been a staple in Heinlein stories forever.
I think what people would most likely object to is the implication that every woman should want that.
The closest he gets is the characterization that's it's natural to women to have babies because their bodies are capable of it, and most women do or at least want to. That shouldn't even be controversial because it's borne out by all of human history.
No, its pretty directly in his interview response, not his work: “I don't think there's much future in a gal who's thoroughly opposed to having babies.”
This part of the article _striongly_ reminded me of that:
In 1978, he suffered a near stroke from a blocked carotid artery that temporarily paralyzed one side of his body and left him to choose between the Damocles sword of massive seizure or the scalpel of a risky operation. He took the surgery, beat the odds, and immediately wrote "The Number of the Beast" (1980) -- four lubricious characters on a romp through various universes -- "to see if my brain would work." (Many critics said No.)
As a kid, I loved Have Spacesuit Will Travel. But even as a 14-15 year old I understood Number Of The Beast was not the same...
It was definitely different than what came before it, though.
One is a Scribner's juvenile, and the other is a novel written for adults.
Anyway, Friday is a post-carotid artery novel and is fantastic. Job, the novel the article discusses, is also great. They're just different from his earlier works.