I’m sure the cost of daycare and the cost of college are huge factors on a couple’s decision. School schedules are also not built around dual working parent households. A lot more could be done to support parents.
Thus, the total number of females willing to be daycare providers is going to be less than the total number of women with children. Thus, demand will always outstrip supply. Thus, the cost of daycare will rise to be the median wage of the highest-income cohort for which the supply meets demand.
For example, if there are ten working women and two are day care carers who can look after four babies each, including their own, then they can look after six non-related babies all together. Assuming each woman has one baby, then of the eight non-carers, only six will have their babies cared for. The other two have to make alternate arrangements. Due to how the market works, the two who have to make other arrangements are going to be the lowest income. The cost of daycare will rise to be the median wage of the six working women, because the substitute for daycare (the women staying home) costs the same. Thus, perpetually, for the bottom twenty percent in this example, daycare will forever be out of reach. There is no getting around this.
Note, I'm not saying anything about whether women should work or stay at home. I'm just pointing out that the whole system boils down to a Ponzi scheme of care, and withdrawals are constantly being demanded.
In Finland, the requirement is 1 carer for 4 children under 3, 1/7 for full-time care above 3, and 1/13 for part-time care above 3. Assuming 1 year of parental leave, 2 years at 1/4, 3 years at 1/7, and 1 year at 1/13, the average child requires 1 person-year of daycare. Assuming 40-year careers, an optimistic fertility rate 2.1, only women working in daycare, and some overhead, we would need 6-7% of women working in daycare.
Yet e.g. Norway's fertility rate has been under replacement, and currently around 1.7, despite measures like long fully paid parental leave, near full daycare coverage and low caps on daycare costs (at a fraction of e.g. what I paid for my son in the UK) as well as a monthly support payment per child (ca $105/month for kids over 6 and ~$168/month for kids under 6) until they turn 18, coupled with no college tuition (you pay living costs if not living with parents, and pay for books etc.) and stipends for students.
Looking at graphs of fertility rates in Norway, they cratered when Norway started getting wealthy, and none of the subsequent expansions of welfare and support for parents appears to have been able to counter it.
For example, I 'want' a farm. When I think about owning a farm, I'm filled with happy thoughts of a pastoral life surrounded by nature, animals, etc. When people ask, I tell them 'yes, I would love to own a farm'. Of course, a few months ago, I had an opportunity to purchase one, and you know what I thought? Well, when I thought about the details... owning animals, caring for animals day in and day out, leaving my current home in the city, etc, I realized what I said I want and what I actually want are completely different things.
Similarly, it's quite useless to ask people what they want. Most people have no idea. In particular, children are considered the default and there's plenty of marketing to show happy pictures of families with kids that make people biased to say they 'want' this, but for many, it's similar to my own idealistic view of what that desire actually entails. Many chicken out when it comes down to it. There's no way to measure this by self reports. If our ancestors were more desirous of children in reality than us or not, this study's methodology is unable to bear this out. Both generations may have said / may say they 'want' children, but there's many meanings of 'want.'
As a society, we need to recognize that college can be helpful in certain career fields but it is generally a huge waste of money compared to the actual education and ROI.