How to initialize a mapping of structs with a mappings?

Question

I have a mapping of a struct, which has a mapping to another struct:

uint256 public questionIdCounter;
mapping(uint256 => Question) public questions;

    struct Question {
        uint256 answerCounter;
        mapping(uint256 => Answer) answers;
    }
    struct Answer {
        address answerer;
    }

And I'm looking to add a new Question, which can have Answers added to it.

function askQuestion() public {
        questions[questionIdCounter] = Question();
        questionIdCounter = questionIdCounter + 1;
    }

And then people can add answers

function answerQuestion(uint256 questionId) public {
        // Add new answer
        questions[questionId].answers[questions[questionId].answerCounter] = Answer({answerer: msg.sender});
        // update answer counter
        questions[questionId].answerCounter = questions[questionId].answerCounter + 1;
}

However, when I look at kbase_questions.questions(0) I only get to see the answerCounter and not the answer mapping.

Why is my empty mapping not being initialized?

I've looked at How to initialized struct with member variable type mapping and How to initialized struct with member variable type mapping, which seem to be the closest to what I'm looking to do, but they are declaring their struct outside the function, which I can't do because I have many structs.

Answer 1

1. After v.0.7.0 and forward, you can't have nested mappings like this anyway.

2. The debugger I was using wasn't showing me the mapping.