I would assume that they mean your great great grandparents benefited greatly by having kids because it brought in more labor while it mostly just cost food. These days there are tons of extra costs to having kids that didn't exist in the past and none of those costs are offset by their labors.

We’re reaching further into the past than great great grandparents to get to the large families for farming but sure. Calling it a “fine” to have kids is really bizarre framing though.

Taking the UK as an example, legislation restricting the use of children under 14 in employment was only adopted in 1933. Previously it looked more like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_the_British_In...

The USA didn't change things up considerably until the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

Not soon after, obviously ww2 and then the baby boom after that. The role of children in families changed hugely in the 20th century.

The number of children per family has been plunging since 1800.

https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/a...

Did they have phones back then?

Yes in the mid to late 1800s, it was not uncommon in rural areas to have barbed wire phone networks.

That’s a great question for someone else. I didn’t say anything about phones.

I'm not arguing, there are a lot of things at play, clearly.