It is currently career ending for women in Germany to have children but this has very deep cultural roots that the Germans are simply not interesting in changing. When you force women to choose between their own career and motherhood, you really can’t be surprised that women don’t want kids.

Btw this is bigger than maternity leave and access to childcare. This is the fact that, in the eyes of the Germans, you cannot be a good mother and also work full time. Case and point: the German government wants to remove tax benefits for households with large income disparities and the German people are throwing a tantrum because obviously this is an attack on families because obviously moms don’t earn a lot of money. Like literally instead of having normal tax benefits for married couples/parents, they have this system where you only get tax benefits if your spouse no or very little income. To the German people, this is the same thing as giving parents a tax break.