[beachtaxidriver]

I see your point. But I think you may be taking it to extremes.

A parent can snuggle multiple kids at once, read to multiple kids at once, take multiple kids to the zoo at once, etc.

Moreover siblings have their own rich relationships.

Having closely spaced siblings is pretty normal.

[llm_trw]

In the west in the year of our lord 1955.

And in the year of our lord 2025 it's normal not to have kids in the west.

In most of the rest of the world neither of those things were normal.

Which is the point.

The west is weird when it comes to raising children and has been uniquely bad at it for over 80 years which happens to be living memory for pretty much everyone on here.

[navane]

Having closed spaced siblings was normal in the entire world forever until a couple decades ago. There wasn't even birth control.

[WalterBright]

80 years? Things started to go awry around 1970. That's when the Boy Scouts stopped treating scouts like young adults and instead began treating them like delicate flowers.

You can see the change in the Boy Scout manual.