I think it's just about choices for those lucky enough to have choices. Most of the women if you go back before 1950 in my family had no choice but to work full time . Lots were in service. others were down mines (not the women). Many many had to move to find work. Some starved. I am not sure there was some past golden time when women had all the time in the world. Even just basic washing of clothes used to take a whole day.
I worry that some younger women aren't brought up to realise how hard life is and always has been. If you are off work for a year you have not got that year's experience. Yo might well have become a dab hand at putting on nappies but you haven't done the number of operations you would have done had yo been in work. That is not discrimination - that is fact. Now I am in year 30 of working in law and of course had I taken long maternity leaves over that length of working life it would not matter in terms of experience although it might have mattered at the time.
I suspect people need to realise there are some of us who like our work so much that there is very little we enjoy as much as doing it and you are competing against people like us of both genders. I genuinely enjoy doing my work as much as cleaning a floor or holding a baby. That does not mean I only do my work but I am certainly keener to do it and probably quicker at doing it than a lot of people which is why people want to hire me.
So men and women make choices. Plenty of men want shorter hours too.
I have a book called the 4 hour working week. If I didn't like my work I could easily live on what I could charge in a day as I'm not very materialistic. There are smart ways to work fewer hours if that is what you want if you have good ideas or are experienced or well qualified in something.
My advice to women who want a long term career though is keep at it even if you've been up all night with the baby (we did shifts of baby care at night by the way - only women married to sexist men are the only ones up in the night and my father in the 1960s did 100% of night waking with my siblings who were bottle fed - he was a doctor. So if men 50 years ago could do 100% or 50% of dealing with the baby at night I don't see why men now can't) as the difficult phase passes.
As someone said above once you get more senior in most jobs things are a lot easier. It is with quite a laugh we have been planning a family summer holiday for next year. Of my 3 children in work the one who finds it hardest to fix his holiday is the one working as a postman at present. So we have me, lawyer, my two lawyer daughters and one of those's banker husband all fitting our time off around the postman's availability as he is the least senior so has much less choice over just about everything never mind fitting it around school holidays for the teenagers (it is my 27th year of having children at school and probably another 6 years before we will be able to take holidays out of school time.
Woody Allen was once asked how he did well. He said he just showed up. So many people don't. They are off sick, making a meal of pregnancy, skiving, lazy, unreliable. So that those of us who aren't are quite rare. We all be used to tradesmen and colleagues who don't turn up on time.
So what can we teach children? Most of all endurance, physical and mental strength, stoicism, capacity for hard work, ability never to be broken. In fact my oldest who never slept much at all as a baby finds that terribly useful now in keeping going when work is busy - the silver lining perhaps in the cloud of having a very non sleeping baby.