Are women better than men at childcare?

As Jackie says practice makes perfect. Overall women probably are better at childcare but only because they do more of it. It's not innate, beyond the fact that women carry their babies, birth them and often feed them which is generally going to help in the early days.

If men did more childcare they'd get better at it. Simples.

Oh and women are less violent. Can only help really.

Practice makes perfect!

Also, standard comment to me when I was SAHM - 'ah, you're so lucky, you get to spend those precious moments' etc.
Standard to DH 'but aren't you bored?'

In our case, no. I was bored and he thrives on it.

Anecdotally - totally untrue in itself - as a SAHM is was shocking and basically watched TV in a grump until DH came home. DH is now a SAHD and everything works perfectly - food cooked, kids entertained, clothes clean etc. But really that's because of me and him, not because of our genders.
In terms of perception, definitely. I received no comments either way on my mothering abilities from people outside my immediate family. DH is randomly praised and hailed as some kind of demi-god for being willing to wipe bums and noses.

It really is as said upthread - an ingrained expectation that women should be happy with drudgery, whereas men are remarkable if they put up with it.

There is a common assumption that women are better at the drudgery of childcare and that somehow sleepless nights and hands covered in poo is easier for us to deal with than for men. We are somehow better at it and that makes it economically efficient to ring fence that as our job.

This is nonsense but because it has been entrenched through millennia of oppression we actually have trained ourselves to accept it. And even to make a virtue out of it. Which is why it looks as though we are better at it when in reality the sexes are equally well adapted (or poorly adapted, really) to the mindless drudgery bit of childcare.

It is the basis of women's oppression that women, as well as bearing children (at a surprisingly high level of physical risk) are also, by dint of their child bearing abilities, better suited to doing the work of raising them.

So, yes, on the one hand, it is accepted under Patriarchy that women are better at raising children and other unpaid work, such as housework, it isn't true. It creates a situation whereby childcare is viewed as a lesser value occupation than one where there is financial renumeration, which further reinforces Patriarchal society's view of women as lesser when compared to men.