There are more factors than that. I had spreadsheets on the different costs of childcare to figure out if it made financial sense for me to work after my 2nd was born. (It did since I have a decent paying career as an engineer).
My compromise was part time. I've been working 4 days a week for 12 years, and 3 days a week for the year prior to that.
But - it was also a matter of temperament. I would have gone nutso staying home full time when they were younger. I "like" them a lot more now that they are budding intellectuals and no longer just producing drool and poop. I guess working was selfish for me - but it saved my sanity.
I envied the mom's who were natural nurturers. I had to work harder at it, it wasn't one of my strengths/skills.
Well, a lot of that applies to me. In our house I
didn't stay home when my kids were young. I was 40 when my first child was born and, frankly, the idea of just quitting work because I was now a parent didn't resonate with me at all. Perhaps that is because I was one of the few kids in the 50s/60s whose middle class mom worked (she also saw no reason to quit working just because she became a parent).
For the first couple of years I juggled everything and it was hard. So I did go to reduced hours for a few years. I wouldn't exactly call it part-time since it was actually closer to what full-time than part-time (basically I left the office at 4:30 or so a few days a week). That helped. I did earn reduced pay during this time and I was very aware of the fact that I was contributing less to the household. Note that in our family I was the higher earner than my husband. From a strict salary standpoint, if anyone would have quit to stay home with kids it would have been him. OTOH, he had better benefits, particularly pension benefits than I had (I had none). So, it really kind of balanced out.
Later we adopted 2 older children and I did work full-time after that. Although I was advanced enough in my career that I had
some flexibility on when I was at the office and occasionally I would work from home.
4 years ago, with a 16 year old and a 13 year old, DH retired and I semi-retired. I went from working full-time to working one or two days a week.
Doing that did allow us to do somethings with our kids that we couldn't have done had not one of us been at home. For example, we homeschooled our daughter for high school (she has since graduated) and that was greatly to her benefit. I guess we could have done that with DH retired and me still working full-time.
There is no question that DH retiring and me semi-retiring 4 years ago made a difference in the money we have. We were at the height of our careers and our earnings. When I think of what we would have made over the past 4 years, well, it would have been a lot. Far example, a couple of years ago I worked about 12 hours a week and earned $85k. So you can extrapolate from that what I would have earned had I been working full-time.
So, without question, we have less money than we would have had if one or both of us had been working full time the last 4 years.
And, without doubt the fact that we both worked full-time allowed us certain things financially that benefited our family greatly at the time. One of our children needed to attend an expensive therapeutic school and there were other associated costs that were very expensive. We could never have afforded it had either DH or I not been working at the time. And, that child is now in college doing really well. So, I can never be sorry that we both worked and could afford that.
At the the same time, when DH retired and I semi-retired and we started homeschooling our daughter, we knew the hit we would take financially to do it but we felt he had "enough" and could afford to do it. It was much easier to do that knowing we already had enough.