Ah! Finally found my oar. Shall I hold it up close to you so that you can see what's written in teeny-weeny letters on the side?
(FWIW I am a lifelong feminist)
OP is asking a question which, while closely related to offensive questions, is not intrinsically offensive.
I think most of us have observed that children would like to be with one or both of their children as much as they can.
This is rarely possible, but when it is, it is reasonable to ask, at least, why their parents won't give them what they want. If, that is, they put their child's needs before their own.
And - to preempt - it is also reasonable to talk about 'putting a child's needs before one's own', despite the fact that language like this has been used in the past to justify and support the repression of women. Simply because an idea has been co-opted by a repressive ideology doesn't make the idea repressive in and of itself. A child's needs cannot be met by the child. They must be met by a parent.
The fact that the same question is not asked of men is very unfair. But it does not mean that it must not be asked of women. We are individuals, finally, who make individual moral choices. A moral wrong (which this may, or may not be) is still a moral wrong however many others make that choice.
The question then being asked, and the answer "because I don't want to be with my child, although I know s/he wants to be with me" being given, it is reasonable to ask them whether they are truly suited to parenthood.
Madamez makes a very acute point, I think. Perhaps the insidious pressure is that to have babies at all, without giving up 'womanliness'.
What she doesn't articulate is that the reason that some people aren't constitutionally suited to children is because they aren't constitutionally suited to this form of self-abnegation.
And elsewhere:
The point about wanting people, not babies, is rather disingenuous (or dramatically misinformed, re biology). People come from babies.
The point about paying the mortgage, while practical, is not in itself an argument-stopper. There are always smaller mortgages, shiter areas.
'not all women are earth mother, nurturing types'. Indeed no, and I would fight for the death to these women's right not to have children.
MrsMattie asks with irony, how dare a woman do something bcs she enjoys it. Again, I would fight to the blah blah, but I have to acknowledge that the situation is different when children, who have not agency or choice, are or might be adversely affected by this choice. My moral sense as a human being (I know this is not a politically neutral term) would outweigh my feminist principles.
Several people have posted along the lines of 'it never did my children/my friend's children any harm.' Because we can't see unhappiness in children does not mean that it is not there, as many of us can attest from our own experiences.
Cat64 thinks babies don't care who's looking after them, and I'm wondering whether she had a different kind of baby from the kind I had.
Xenia has missed the point entirely, again.