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Lydia Langtree,
I think there is a bit of misandry behind much of the implication that uneven division of (especially young) childcare is the fault of fathers. I'm 75 and I don't recall, at the time or later, my mother or any of my aunts showing any anxiety to get back to work when the children were young. Their jobs had been neither tiresome nor enticing and there was far more satisfaction in caring for the little bundle whom they chose to have hanging round their neck for a large part of the day, or who later obliged them to think of cunning ways to get round its self-centredness. They lived in the, in some sense, good old days when they could choose, after marriage, whether or not to continue working, knowing that their husbands were able and expected to provide full financial support. Dare I say that I suppose there are women today (even feisty, when necessary) who would like that choice?
My first wife, a teacher, gave up her job for a year after each of our two children were born, and then handed them over to a former colleague, who had got the best of both worlds by setting up a nursery after the birth of her first child. My elder daughter (solicitor) did the same with her first two. After the third, she gave up indefinitely because she thought (and how right she was) that they would have far more extra-curric opportunities with her on-call; her husband is also a solicitor, who discovered a niche, in which he earns far more, with v hard work and much travel, than she would have. A great part of the chn's opportunities - inc being bi/multi-lingual - are due to the fact that she and they could move to their house in France rather than living in London. It's not that she didn't miss work, but by the time the youngest was in jr school, she knew that, even if they returned here, she would be wholly out of date with professional requirements. Her sister says it has been hard on her, but there's no way the children would have had the life they had, have and, hopefully, will have without her (?)'sacrifice'. The younger one has better qualifications than her husband, who has useful technical (and musical) abilities and can work flexibly, so she went back each time after maternity leave and left much childcare and household jobs to him.
I was widowed and then remarried at a late age a wife much younger than I, also a teacher/inspector. Her first grandchild arrived 9 months ago and she gave up work and has spent most weekdays for the last 6 months deliriously tending to him, so dtr-in-law could take up PhD offer and son a v well-paid new job. Did she like work? V much. Does she like her current role better? You bet.
You have to make choices in life; if the results turn out to be no worse than you might have expected, then what's to complain about? It sometimes seems to me that babies are being blamed for mothers' diminished employment prospects but most mothers I know would not have remained childless in order to enhance their careers.
Life may be what you make it, but what women can make it is constrained by nature, not just the nature of procreation, but the caring disposition with which nature seems more greatly to have endowed, or burdened, them.