My experience comes from living in 3 major US cities outside of SV/NYC, take it for what you will. That's great that you can have a SAHM, but I don't think women should be basically forced to do that. I concede that having a SAHM is easier on a US engineering salary than in Sweden, but there are probably way more families in the US that can't really afford to have a SAHM and are in economic distress because they have to choose between staying home and losing income, and going to work and paying for child care (plus the issue of low parental leave). Because of this and many other issues, I argue that life for most families life is way less stressful in Sweden than in the US. Even for high income families, basically free health care, education, child care plus amazing work-life balance, parental leave etc makes having children as low stress as you can feasibly get.