I agree that the situation is far worse in the US than it is here. Not that conditions in the UK are perfect, but in the US it's awful. I had a tenure-track job in a big state university in the US and as a state employee, I was entitled to two weeks' paid maternity leave. Two weeks. The Family and Medical Leave Act, passed under Clinton's administration, was a big deal because it enabled women to take a whole 12 weeks off after giving birth if they wanted it (unpaid leave of course). There are ways to negotiate more time off if you're an academic - you can use accrued "sick leave" or use valuable research/sabbatical leave for motherhood. But the attitude is very much that after having given birth, you need to be back at work as normal as soon as possible. Oh, and childcare options are much more limited as well; it's very hard to find nurseries and childminders (my university had a nursery, but they would only take children once they were potty-trained. So no babies or young toddlers).
I could tell a whole string of anecdotes about young women academics being told off by senior colleagues and heads of department for procreating (and older women academics can be dreadfully sexist to younger ones in this regard).
I know one high-flying academic couple who relocated from a small, prestigious US liberal arts college to the UK, because they had had one child in the US and found the logistics of work/parenthood so difficult that they felt that if they stayed in the US, having a second child would be impossible. So now they are academics in the UK with two children.
The UK system of 6 months' paid mat leave (if you're been working for your employer long enough) and 12 months if you want it is something that I and other American women find amazing. Yes, taking those breaks can still have a negative effect on your career, but at least your right to take them is enshrined in law.
I have a huge gap on my CV now due to having moved to the UK for family-related reasons and not had a full-time academic post - instead I had a badly paid part-time post and two DC in part-time childcare. In the US, I think my career would effectively be over. In the UK, however, I just managed to get a very nice full-time post (it's not permanent, but still, I'm over the moon about it). The hiring panel "bought" my argument that I took time off from research for motherhood and am now ready to plunge into intensive research again. I know I'm very lucky, as posts in my field are few and far between, and the future is still uncertain, but so far I have found UK colleagues to be very supportive of combining work with family, in a way that my most of US colleagues never were.
There is still lots of work to be done though. My DH is an academic too, quite a senior one, and he makes a big point of taking time off when the DC are ill, etc. Senior colleagues, men especially, need to create a culture within academia where scholars are seen to be making parenting a priority. Then junior colleagues will feel comfortable taking time off for their ill DC too.
bigkids said, "I know a LOT of dual academic couples and in every single case it is the woman who has gone part time or soft pedalled her career post DC."
That's so true. Damn. But increasingly I also know male academics whose academic spouses spend a few days a week working in another city (because it's so hard to find academic jobs in the same place) and those dads do all the childcare for those days each week. Or the same scenario with gender roles reversed. Not that a commuting academic has an easy time of it, but doing the whole morning/evening/bedtime routine with small children while one parent is away is not easy either.
badguider said, "I bet there are some male academics out there who wish they could change their hours and step back a bit to spend runs with their families but due to the same sexism that holds women back that would be seen as even less acceptable for a man than it is for a woman."
Yes!
Sorry to have written such an essay. 