[jtheory]

Nature does tend to push the mother into the stay-at-home role, which is why I'm very much in favor of programs to support greater integration of kids into the workplace to try and balance things more towards fairness -- childcare at work (you take your coffee break, the mother takes her breast-feeding break) is one solution. Allowing mothers to work mostly remotely while still breast-feeding is another.

Here in France the approach is well-funded child care that's available for very young babies -- this is a boon to mothers maintaining their careers, but it's certainly bad for breast-feeding more than a couple of months.