I think that's true of many people.

But I suspect that the numbers are pretty evenly split between "would thrive in either role," "would be miserable in either role," "would much prefer being in the paid workforce," and "would much prefer being a stay at home parent."

My wife and I are squarely in the "would much prefer being in the paid workforce," because we like our jobs, and because we want our children in an organized school environment (and paying for after care is fine for them and for us). Most of our social circle are in the same boat. But most of us are mid-career white collar professionals and have better than average flexibility over work hours and location (at perhaps the cost of a blurred boundary between work and home). So our jobs are easier to balance with parenting.

On the flip side, home situation matters a lot, too. How much you enjoy different types of household work (cooking, cleaning, home improvement/maintenance), different functions of a caretaker (feeding kids, scheduling out activities, being that first line as an educator or first aid or driver, etc.), how well your hobbies and interests fit into a lifestyle as a full time caretaker, etc.

One of my friends gave up his main career to take care of his kids, but now that they're in school he went back to personal training at a gym. He lines up clients and is only available for sessions between school dropoff and pickup (10am to 2pm). It's a good intermediate holding pattern for him, and he'll likely go back to his main white collar career once his kids are old enough to be latchkey kids. That being said, I know he wasn't super happy not working outside of the home, and this personal trainer thing has him in a much better spot than when his kids were too young for school.

I loved cooking in a professional kitchen. The job itself was great. Some of the coworkers were all over the place, but I fucking loved the good ones.

And there's something immensely satisfying about the teamwork behind turning a bunch of raw ingredients into multiple delicious meals, perfectly timed out with each dish hitting the table at the right moment. (The frustration of a kitchen that isn't doing this is a separate story.)

But the industry itself has so much toxicity. Bad managers, bad owners. Substance abuse problems. And the real reason I left wasn't actually the bad pay. It was the miserable hours. I was always a night owl but I couldn't deal with the isolating separation from my family and non-industry friends from working nights, weekends, and holidays when everyone else was building memories and reinforcing bonds.

Why limit yourself.

Both.

I mean.. I'd try it. I might not like it, but I'll give it a go.

"Nobody at a factory spends a week working on a report, only for their boss to decide on a Friday afternoon that everything is wrong and needs to be redone by Monday"

This is absolutely not true. Mechanics, factory workers, labourers all get fucked over like this all the time. The mental strain of a job isn't greater for people who work at a desk it's just the only strain they experience as opposed to someone who works with their hands who has to deal with the physical and mental demands of their labour.

When and where?

Or it could just have been the benzos

Boomers for sure did, leaded gasoline began being used before Boomers were even born.

What likely leads to greater exposure is how many cars there were by the 70s and 80s. But lead exposure is cumulative over a lifetime. So I would be curious to see that research, as Boomers had roughly 40 years of exposure from 1950s to 1994. Gen X wouldn't have that much by decades.

More like "fuck safety" amiright?

Mad Men, all seasons. Obviously.

Even today, the workplace death rate for men is something like 20x that of women.

This will give me nightmares I fear.

Mid 40's. Not an office worker

Men did not mostly have office jobs in the 1950s and 60s.

Speaking as a working parent (married to another working parent), it's worth pointing out that this dichotomy isn't mutually exclusive:

raising children is far more self-fulfilling than working a job could ever be for most people.

I agree with this! But I also would note that of the 168 hours in a week, being away from them for 50 of them (especially if they're at school anyway for 30 of them) doesn't really detract from my ability to do both big picture parenting (teaching life skills, moral values, building memories, being a role model) or even the small stuff that adds up (cooking meals, helping with homework, listening to them, talking to them, taking them to and from extracurricular activities, pursuing hobbies together, etc.).

So it's not an all or nothing thing. Most working parents can still raise children in an immensely fulfilling way, so the fulfilling part of a stay at home parent isn't actually exclusive to the stay at home parents.