in my experience raising two kids women are much more looked down on for choosing family over career. My wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mom but many of her friends, and especially online, thought she was "too good for that" with some even being hostile to the very concept. If a woman has an established career and then chooses to be a stay-at-home mom she's likely to pay a heavy price socially.
I don't doubt this at all, at least in certain circles. I suspect it's not limited to small circles, either. My wife's office culture is somewhat accepting of women leaving to raise families, but many of the women in management have totally forgone that option or have/had their kids in daycare very, very early on. I'm certainly not judging as I have no idea why, or what would necessitate that, or if it's necessarily good or bad. It's too complicated to judge in any meaningful way.
It certainly generates expectations and pressures though, and they're very harmful to people like my wife. Many of the women my wife has talked to feel distinctly anxious about managing their family life with women like that in charge. Further, many of the men in management are quite old and tend to think of leaving to raise a family as a distinct lack of commitment to the work – something which gets you excluded from "serious" work like field deployments where high reliability and commitment is considered crucial to the role.
Many women are already excluded from much of field work because some older dudes think women aren't strong enough to make the work safe. For example, under-water installations of equipment are almost exclusively performed by men because the men running the deployments believe a woman would be incapable of supporting a man if his safety was compromised. As such, the women on the team who want to progress need to fully commit in all other possible ways in order to appear viable. Leaving to have kids is essentially 3 strikes at once against your reputation in field work.
It's tough to watch.
It’s just economics IMO. It’s mostly double income now.
Men only pay it when choosing stay-at-home dads.