> I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare.

My sister did this too until it got to be nearly as much as her entire salary so then she stopped working again and became the daycare. And that is super hard when your children have special needs. I think the worst may be that in-between area, where working and paying for daycare still seems to make sense financially because you take home more than you spend on not being at home but the net practical result is working for a very low effective salary to also spend less time with the children, which is its own kind of utterly draining.

The tipping point isn’t just take home pay. Peak daycare expense is generally only for a few years. Quit the workforce for a decade and you see long term effects.

Further if either parent loses their job you can quit daycare until they get a new one. Single income families are far less resilient.