Haven|1348538280|3274058 said:I've been thinking about this question for a while and I keep coming back to the same thing:
Parenting. Parenting is the most important "profession" to society. I know it's not technically a profession, but if every person had the benefit of being raised by a strong, positive, supportive parent or guardian, then I believe society would be in much better shape now.
Hmmm, I think parenting is very different than say a hundred years ago. Not saying the old times were better but children were more valued making parenting more valued.
My grandfather was a farmer as were most people in the early 1900s. He told me that farmers needed to have children to help out on the farm and they needed lots of children to take over the majority of the burden as they got older; physically not being able to do the farmwork any more. And before the advent of Social Security and nursing homes, the primary caretakers of old people were their children.
Children were needed and so good parenting was needed. Couples didn't decide to not have children; they needed them. And if you saw a couple with one or two children, it wasn't by choice but it was because they couldn't have any more.
My grandmother was one of six children and that was considered an average number - good but not especially large. My grandfather was one of eight - again a little larger than normal but not excessively so. Nowadays if a family has six or eight children, people think they're crazy. Whereas, before, if a couple decided they didn't want any children, everybody thought they were crazy.