alt Hacker News>as though everyone deeply wants to spend their waking days at an office desk / driving an Uber / etc,
I don't think this is it, which is why I brought up a trust fund in one of my previous comments.
This comes down to personal risk tolerances, but it seems evident that many people feel that volatility in job markets and shrinking economic opportunities mean that there is a sufficient gain in security of housing/food/energy/healthcare/future economic opportunities such that it can be worth a sacrifice in spending time with children.
My parents moved to the US, along with their extended families from a developing country, and they almost all spent 24/7 working to develop businesses or whatever to ensure the kids had more opportunity than them. And they succeeded, most of my cousins do very well for themselves, and they can have a spouse that stays at home without decreasing their kids' future chances, but some don't (perhaps because their parents ended up in a stagnant metro rather than a growing one, that one factor is the single biggest difference in trajectories in my family).
It is easier than ever to be outcompeted by someone else around the world, so there is kind of an up or out situation for those that aim for maintaining a certain quality of life. It's also fine to opt out of that rat race, but from my perspective, the biggest cost is less access to healthcare.
I would note that the whole one spouse spending time with kids thing is probably a post world war 2 American/British phenomenon. Even in village life in developing countries, both the husband and wife are out working in factories or fields while grandparents who can't work anymore or older siblings and cousins are taking care of the kids. It's a grind for most people, most of the time.
Your framing makes perfect sense to me, and I agree with it. It comes down to economic forces requiring parents to sacrifice time at home with their children.
In this framing, being able to have a stay-at-home parent is a privilege to be treasured. Not everyone can manage it, which is a tragedy.
Of course, for those who don't want to be a parent and prefer their job, that's fine too. Some people, whether men or women, just yearn for the mines. I wouldn't say that any such people should be pressured to be a stay at home parent. Hopefully they can be happily childless, or else partner with someone who enjoys raising children, or else get support from grandparents or the community.
What I simply object to is a framing that views being a "traditional" stay at home parent as an intrinsically miserable or undesirable role, when it's what so many of us factory workers wish we could do ourselves but can't afford to. When a (loving, non-abusive) couple can afford to have one parent stay at home, my wife and I both view that stay-at-home parent as the lucky one.