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Comment by mortureb | Hacker News Reader

That’s a red herring. A person overlooking 5-15 kids is never going to be able to offer the care a one on one relationship with a mother can. Maybe a nanny might be an analogous alternative but the state will never be able to pay for that.

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> A person overlooking 5-15 kids is never going to be able to offer the care a one on one relationship with a mother can.

Some mothers have 5-15 kids!

Most, and I mean 93%+ of Americans don’t and that’s just for the lower bound of 5 kids. It’s 0.002% at 15.

I am well aware that it is uncommon, coming as I do from a family of eleven children; but the world is much more than America, and birth control is a recent invention. I don't see how you can reasonably claim that one person cannot care for such a number of children when mothers of large families have been doing it for millenia.

It’s never at the same time and older siblings help with the younger ones which is still an infinitely better situation than some low paid employee watching 15 kids at the same time.

Also that time has passed. All of Asia including south and south east are basically at replacement rate. Africa averages higher but not by a whole lot more and that number is dropping quickly.

There’s a reason women from wealthy families never work and dedicate all their time to raising kids.

the mistake you are making is to expect that it is only going to be the mothers who stay at home instead of any parent. it definitely should be possible for one parent to stay at home. but it should not matter if it is the mother or the father.

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