This has been going on for a loooong time.
Yes, I know many women of my age. They feel really, really pressured to be mothers even when they don't want to be. Several women I know literally had to cut people out of their lives due to verbal abuse trying to pressure them to be mothers! Every mother I know also has expressed how exhausting motherhood is and emphasized how it should be an entirely uncoerced choice.
How many women do you speak to casually about this sort of thing?
And women are pressured to enter the workforce; in fact they're forced to take extensive education, enter the workforce, and to establish a career, and all that takes effort and resources that won't be invested in motherhood or family. So, it's understandable that women rarely hear about the joys of permanent, fruitful, faithful matrimony and motherhood, and that the prevailing winds should whisper into a woman's ear that motherhood is a drag, pregnancy is a horrific experience you'll never recover from, and the best thing to do is not let yourself be weighed down by the bonds of love and intimacy with a husband or children.
I never said pregnancy is a disease, or that motherhood is a drag. I said I've spoken with mothers who have said motherhood should be uncoerced. I said I know women who have chosen not to have children and have needed to escape verbal abuse from people who pressure them, and I hope the ability to have children without a woman involved will societally lessen the pressure women have to be mothers. I want the only people who are mothers are people who want to be mothers, not people who feel that just because they are a woman they must also become a mother. This leads to really painful, desperately sad places psychologically for women who are infertile, have miscarriages, or lose their fertility through the natural aging process.
You should ask the mothers you know how they feel about that? The majority (i'd say the vast majority), consider motherhood the most important and best thing in their lives.
Plus, the only alternative is men? Who by definition cannot be "mothers". So you're describing being raise only by fathers. So.. now the suggestion is just adding pressure of fatherhood? lol
> Maybe we can even develop more equitable societies where any gender can raise any children, or all genders will be expected to raise all children.
All genders, in all cultures, do raise all children. That said, each likely plays a different role. Just imagine some hunter gatherer culture - men provide meat, teach their sons to hunt & fish too, teach their daughters to pick honorable men for husbands, maybe even find honorable men. Women, teach their children to clean animals, make clothes, make food & fires, etc. This tradition has largely stayed the same.
In the first world, Women have changed their roles, as automation replaced the need for many of the tasks. Men have continued to provide a similar role. In both cases, I argue parents are increasingly teaching their children less directly; outsourcing it to "educators". That said, I think it's had detrimental effects on families and you can see that in the depression rates, competency rates, divorce rates, etc.