One reason salaries are high in Switzerland is the men are expected to support an entire family off one salary. If you really want to you can consider the "free

One reason salaries are high in Switzerland is the men are expected to support an entire family off one salary. If you really want to you can consider the "free" housing, food, heating, car etc as payment to the woman, although that seems unnecessarily materialistic. As for impact on career, this is again a matter of perspective. If parenting is skilled work then arguably raising children is a second career. We don't normally classify parenting as a career but that's just a matter of terminology.