i feel like people in the notes don't really understand what i mean here. i'm not saying it can never make sense for a woman to have children in a story. there's a reason i mentioned an epilogue in the post (or an equivalent, some kind of time skip at the end of your story). what i really mainly have a problem with is relying on this trope as short hand for "The Nuclear Family = proof it's a Happy Ending :)" as if that's like. the only way you can show that? as if that is what marks whether or not a woman can be happy with her life? if you are showing a woman being happy with starting a family, you're allowed to do that, but it should absolutely not just be tacked on at the very end like this. bad and lazy writing at best, actively misogynistic at worst.
the example everyone is arguing for either side of in the notes is katniss from the hunger games (disclaimer that i haven't read the books in a long time so i don't exactly remember how it's handled, but i rewatched the movies recently and it sucks really bad there). sure, you can absolutely argue that this kind of ending makes sense for her. the reason she doesn't want kids throughout the story is because of the state of the world she lives in, so when the war is over, and she does have kids, that may very well be perfectly internally consistent with the world and her character. but that doesn't make this kind of writing any less lazy and misogynistic to me, because it's still a trope deployed simply to prove this peace to the reader, not actually grounded in exploring the character further or providing any real depth to this choice (hence it being kind of shoved in there at the very end). look, she's a wife and mother, that means she's happy now and the world is fixed! how else would we know? this is the thing all women really want deep down when their unfortunate circumstances aren't getting in the way of it, right?