Tell that to the guys who made Jira.
But seriously, this is about as insightful as saying career choice affects lifetime earnings. Most people have settled their career by their early 30s. Throw kids into the mix and its no big surprise.
But seriously, this is about as insightful as saying career choice affects lifetime earnings. Most people have settled their career by their early 30s. Throw kids into the mix and its no big surprise.
In my experience kids can have quite the opposite effect - I got a lot more ambitious when the first one arrived, and I've almost doubled my salary since then (a bit more than four years).
In The Netherlands it's pretty normal to bring kids to daycare from 3 or 6 months.
In the end, there is often a salary hit though. My wife started working less. Also, there is no extra time anymore - on working days, we always go home at 17:00 sharp.
That's still not that huge a portion of a typical ~40 years career (unless you have a lot of children - I think the average for western Europe is somewhere between 1 and 2 kids) and you'd get parental leave payments during that time.
So sure it probably hurts your combined income but I think it's very rarely a 50% reduction as suggested by OP saying he needs to double his salary to stay at the same level.
Sources: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm and http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LFS_SEXAGE_I_R
Where I come from this is extremely uncommon.