Namechanged because all this is very outing.
This is so incredibly sad. These airheads who don't realise most younger children love to learn and are like little sponges at primary . When you have parents who never had enthusiasm for learning themselves it's inevitable their kids won't be encouraged. It's like if your child sees you reading they want to read, if learning spellings or tables is presented as a game and encouraged, these are the kids who will excell. Still I suppose if you just want your child to get by rather than excell it's fine.
I left school at sixteen because I found it dull. I then sought out the syllabi for the five A levels that interested me and studied them in my own time, sitting the actual exams in centres run by the boards - I worked while doing this. I got good enough grades to go to Cambridge to read law. Where I met my husband, who didn't do any formal homework worth mentioning in all his time in his super-selective grammar, but somehow scraped 4 As and studied Economics alongside me (please note: he studied hard at school. He just couldn't be arsed with homework. They are not synonymous). When we left university I studied for a Masters on an internationally competitive scholarship, and my husband did one further degree for fun via the OU, and another as part of his professional studies.
Our son is on the gifted and talented register and attained the ceiling score in maths (115) and slightly below in reading (112) in his KS1 SATS last term - the age expected score was 100. He hasn't done the set homework since Reception, because it became clear to all concerned that it was turning him off learning in a significant way. He does a lot of informal, child-led learning at home because, as you correctly say, small children are sponges... so why try to force-feed them?
And what does, "It's like if your child sees you reading they want to read" have to do with formal homework? My son knows we love to read. He also loves to read. Why force a child to read out loud from a dull-as-ditchwater scheme, when he can pick a book he wants, and love it? How is that a positive, in developing a love of learning?
Perhaps we could all "excell" as well as you and your own children if we followed your approach, but at present, I think I'll keep on with ours.
As for "even with ASD we always managed it..." erm, you do know that Tony Attwood presented to a Parliamentary Select Committee, suggesting that forcing ASD children to do homework was an exercise in counter-productive futility? And you do also know that children with ASD are not cloned, and that your own is not a template for how others may react? If your ASD child could "always be managed for ten minutes" then congratulations, because that is literally not something I have ever heard any other parent of an autistic child claim. And I have autistic relatives in the immediate family across three generations.