Not sure I understand you correctly, but the study I linked shows that mother's earnings drop significantly after the First child. That has nothing to do with the significant monetary cost of children, which are added on top of that.
On page 43, it shows very clearly, that women who do not have children have almost no earnings gap.
Society can "fix" this in two ways:
- introduce the same penalty for fathers, so that both earn less - which would IMHO lead to even less children
- lift up families/mothers and help women not experience this gap, by having full time high quality child Care, have laws that allow mothers to take their children to Work, etc etc.
Second one is much harder to accomplish, because it costs money and time and effort.
The first one is Just forcing fathers to stay at home while mothers go back to Work.
As a father, I really can't understand how every article about this topic talks about as if fathers and mothers are just interchangeable. We are not.
Mothers carry their child for ~9 months, they give birth to that child. The bond between a mother and her freshly born child is bigger than that of the father.
Of course fathers are very important too, and yes fathers should spend more Time with their children in general.
But it's Just crazy to ask mothers to get back to work as soon as possible. Many mothers want to Work part Time, because they want to spend more time with their children. The issue is, that care work is not paid or valued nearly the same as work for money.
Also if you're feeding your young child like you are supposed to, the father simply can't feed the child, because we don't give milk.
Nearly all articles about this topic care only for how to get women back to Work instead of what's best for society and for families.
If that would be the Focus, we would talk way more about how to integrate children into the work Life and less on how to grow GDP.