My answer to Ms Slaughter is that society must change for the benefit of women. Yes women want to be good mothers. Yes women want to spend time with their children, but there is nothing so mindlessly boring as playing endless peek-a-boo with babies and changing their diapers.
Also some women just don't want to be mothers. This may seem to be shocking to most people but some women, myself included just never wanted to go thru the diaper changing, breast feeding, burping, being woken up on by a baby for feeding, and perhaps some of that would've been obviated if I'd married someone rich enough to pay for a nanny.
Some women may bare some regret over not having kids at some point of their life and this may stem from not being wealthy enough to afford nannies for those times when the baby is very young and requiring nearly constant attention. But I think there are other things that may be considered equally and even more fulfilling, like ones intellectual career. I doubt Jane Austen felt remorse for not being a mother or wife.
I can't imagine anything more boring than changing nappies for an infant that's only defense is its disarming gurgling and dewy eyed smile other than that of research. I am used to the intellectual jousting that I love and the hope for the immortality Jane Austen promises with her insight into the economy, human nature and innovation, when she wrote the first modern novels.
Anyway, society must change so that the work force is permitted to work part-time. Children of women who work full-time are apt to be spoiled yet still neglected, children of women who are full time mothers are apt to be subject to their mothers living vicariously through them.
Stay at home mothers isn't the solution to societies problems, the problem is that mothers are forced to stay at home because the work force is designed against them being within it. The reason that stay at home moms is not valued is that the role of motherhood is totally devalued and low status.
It is time we started valuing the role of motherhood.