My wife and I (~30, educated professionals) have a 8-month old. My wife as zero interest in staying at home. But from the minute she got pregnant the pressure started. My mom and her mom (both of whom work/ed) suggested that may she should stay at home for a few years when the baby was young. She's constantly bombarded by parenting fads that tell her she's a bad mom if she doesn't breastfeed/wear her baby around in a sling/etc. Those fads are never very compatible with professional working life.
And the moment we start talking about married women, the wider discussion of the pay gap (assuming it is only due to working less) becomes less of an apples to apples comparison. Your spouse, at least by law, shares your income (as you do hers), and has alimony in the event of a divorce.
I don't know if you were thinking at all about the wider discussion (tangents are of course ok to have), but I thought I should just mention it since it didn't seem to have gotten much mention in this thread.
> Meanwhile, nobody has any expectations of me. Nobody wonders why I don't take a few years off to raise the kid. None of the parenting fads are aimed at me. Heck, my own mother gets nervous whenever I have responsibility for the kid.
I like how you say that nobody has any expectations of you, and then contradict yourself in the last sentence. Clearly your mother has the expectation that you will have less responsibility for your child than your spouse. That is still an expectation. And people in general are probably expecting that you won't take time off for work to look after your child. That kind of expectation a blessing for somebody, and a burden for others. Maybe you have less expectations in the sense that you aren't expected to do more paid labour than your wife, but I doubt it.
What is more controversial: a stay-at-home dad or a mother who works full time? In some ways the expectations put on women are more flexible, or shall I say optional, than the ones put on men.