breeding-ground

plural breeding-grounds · alternative breeding ground

1. A place or region where animals go to breed.
2. figurativelyA place or institution seen as creating large numbers of a stated thing, type of person, etc.

   What, wonder the denigrators, is county cricket for (if you ignore for a moment the small matter of providing a breeding-ground for the Test team)?

   2007 December 18, Lawrence Booth, The Guardian

   2 more examples

   Harris criticized the report's emphasis on enforcement, noting that, "Putting people in jail won't stop the virus from spreading." In fact, prisons are virtual breeding grounds for AIDS, due to lack of safer sex and safer drug use education, condoms and uncontaminated needles.

   1988 August 13, Mark O'Malley, “The Report of the Presidential Commission on HIV: An Analysis”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 5, page 3

   Echoing Allen Ginsberg, he contends that the suburban setting of “Father Knows Best” is most accurately seen as America's “ludicrous breeding ground for the young meat who will be fed into its wars and rat races and inhuman conformities.”

   1989 April 30, Martha Bayles, quoting David Marc, “Taking Sitcoms Seriously”, in The New York Times, →ISSN