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Notes -
At least in-setting, I think those statements are meant to be relative: due to their biology, the plains-folk (which includes Cytosine and Rhamnetin) are biologically wired to react to having a 'nursing' mother around taking a leadership role, and ideally more than one. Doing that mothering results in as much of a physiological and psychological change as any genetic influence does. The tree-folk have something kinda similar at an egg level.
So it would make sense for motherhood and young children to be far more central in Plains-folk fiction; human fiction tends to emphasize kids, but plains-folk fiction you'd expect to see them showing up in action films or military fiction, so on. This could be considered a ridiculous standard (and as aesoptinium goes, it's not exactly subtle!), but it's not that weird by scifi standards.
sure if that were the line in the book. the line in the book says the aliens saw so few kids in movies they thought it was taboo. the perspective character's feeling is "the alien is right and i don't know what to say." but in the real world we know kids are everywhere in our storytelling. so without explaining it, like "x disaster destroyed a shitload of human canon" or "the aliens are weirded out if 100% of stories don't prominently feature kids" or "actually aliens, you're wrong" it's bad writing. for your note, depicting xenophilic spacefaring races who think their experiences are universal is also bad writing, as is using blue-orange morality to show alienness. everybody does "weird" things to fit in. it will be no different for aliens.
i think it'll be exactly the same. we evolved civilization, off endless competition with animals, with nature, and with ourselves. birds don't need civilization, fish don't need civilization. some arthropods don't need civilization, others have it so innately they've perfected it within their niche. apes need civilization. the human is the product of epochal processes that occur on every single planet suitable for life; the human is the product of universal law. if and when we meet friendly ETs they'll be exo-hominid descendants of exo-simians and their most alien quality will be how very similar they are with us.
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