Your conclusion is very true. And academia has a way of putting the pressure on the young workforce (until tenure at 40ish) to work long hours for not much mon

Your conclusion is very true. And academia has a way of putting the pressure on the young workforce (until tenure at 40ish) to work long hours for not much money. And while this is true, it is also worth pointing out that many parents don't want to pause their adult/career goals for 3-6 months because of a new baby. I recently had my first child and while she was little (now 10 months) she would sleep/sit on my lap while I wrote code/ran numerical experiments. I had paternity leave, but I needed to keep working on something because I have an active mind. Now I only worked 4ish hours a day instead of my usual 8-10 (and on side projects instead of work), but I wanted to continue working. My wife who does graphic/web design consulting continued after the birth because it feels good to do adult things. And she didn't stop just because the baby was born she just dropped to 5ish hours a week which has slowly crept back up.