Alberta Finance Minster Iris Evans speaks to reporters in Edmonton on Friday. (CBC)

Alberta's finance minister said Friday she wished she hadn't been the one to start a debate about whether it's best for children to have one parent stay at home while the other one works.

"It's perhaps a debate that happens periodically. In many respects, would I have rather it'd have been somebody else that launched it? Probably," Iris Evans said.

"So it tells me there is a lot of tenderness and concern over what happens with parenting and people are really concerned about that in society," she said of the controversy. "So maybe its time for this debate ... maybe frequently we should examine what our choices are as families and see whether our choices are the ones that are working best for the child."

Evans made her original remarks Wednesday while speaking to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto. The comments that sparked the controversy were made while answering a question from the audience.

In response to the query, she spoke about the importance of teaching children about finances. She also said that good parenting means sacrificing income to stay at home while kids are young as her own children have done.

"They've understood perfectly well that when you're raising children, you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise," Evans told the small crowd. "This is not a statement against daycare. It's a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly."

Speaking to reporters in Edmonton on Friday, Evans repeated that she did not to intend to offend or hurt working parents.

"On that occasion when I was speaking, it was certainly not with an intent to harm anybody or slam anybody's views on how they chose to parent or what choices they've made on the involvement in their families and parenting."

With files from The Canadian Press