When I was expecting my first child, I contemplated the childcare options - ripped an ad for an au pair out of a local newspaper and stuck it in a jug (it is still sitting in that jug, over twenty years later and I am still on that career break!). It is the best decision I ever made!
I will not accept that I have been economically inactive - I have cared for elderly relatives and the children of other family members (allowing them to continue to make an economic contribution to society). My presence at home has, I am sure, helped to provide a more secure and sustainable family life - perhaps making family breakdown and mental ill health (which are currently rife and carry a huge socioeconomic cost) less likely.
We have a sick society and the reality is that women being routinely coerced by society expecting them to ditch their roles as fulltime mothers (psychological, cultural and economic pressure resulting from the normalisation of both parents working) has a wider impact. The opportunity to recognise and acknowledge the inevitable damage, which ignoring hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionarily differentiated roles risks, is constrained by those who have conformed to society's expectations (wishing, understandable, to justify their positions - hence the visceral defensiveness of many full time working parents.
Protest away - but perhaps you protest too much!
It has been a vicious cycle in which working mothers fed economic growth (I would argue unsustainable levels of growth) that pushed up house prices - with the net result that real incomes are worth less, even with two people working.
We took the financial hit and tightened our collective family belt. But part of my husband's taxes go to support the tax free childcare hours that working parents enjoy! Society is starting to realise that the provision of care for the young and old (who are no longer cared for by those women who ostensibly made no contribution to the economy by working in the home!!) is a very expensive business indeed!