The other point of view is that parents splitting up is very traumatic on kids, so effort should be spent on trying to avoid that. A promise to stay together (marriage) is one possible way to try to avoid that.
I don't think courting is trying to front-load the effort, but rather to avoid back-loading effort. Raising kids is a lot of work, and to prove that the two of you are willing to put effort into that, you put effort into planning cool dates while courting. Once the kids come along less effort is spent on cool dates, and more effort is spent on the kids.
That’s making an assumption one route does better than the other. How do you know your assumed correlation isn’t backwards? Or that parents staying in an unhappy and abusive marriage isn’t very traumatic on kids?
In all my long term relationships we lived together for a long period of time and only one resulted in children. So I don’t think courting was particularly required to get to know one another or find a stable situation to raise kids.
On top of which the idea that planning cool dates is a good proxy for raising kids or even long term compatibility is utterly hilarious.
And that’s dodging round the implication that the main reason to have a relationship is to have kids which isn’t true at all.
I don't think courting is trying to front-load the effort, but rather to avoid back-loading effort. Raising kids is a lot of work, and to prove that the two of you are willing to put effort into that, you put effort into planning cool dates while courting. Once the kids come along less effort is spent on cool dates, and more effort is spent on the kids.