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No, lots of women have historically done economically-productive work while having kids. In fact, it gets easier to do so the more kids you have, as the elder can be entrusted with child supervision responsibilities over the younger.
What is really messing around with people is the extremely-extended adolescence that expanded access to tertiary education has wrought (well, it might actually just be the uniquely-weird position of the Millennial generation, which first had to deal with a glutted post-secondary job market thanks to the Boomers and offshoring, and then had to deal with a massively depressed post-tertiary job market due to the Great Recession, and so has been seriously behind in going through life's maturation steps like moving out, getting access to promotions and professional networks, and the ability to amass assets like housing stock.)
Yeah there's vast economies of scale with children which makes the current situation a bit weird, both in the sense of within a singular family unit and within an extended family it's easier to conduct childcare when you've got a bunch of cousins reproducing at about the same time.
Well, that assumes that extended families stay in generally the same place, and what with the youth flooding into the megalopoli to seek white collar prestige jobs I don't know that's a sound assumption anymore.
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