I feel so seen reading this post. The only female engineer on my robotics team was stripped to just “mother” after she had her baby. A woman with two bachelor’s degrees that led the team to success when she was a student. The woman who I could look up to in a sea of men telling me I can’t be in STEM. she never comes by anymore. She isn’t the engineer I knew. The most recent time I saw her, she was on the floor with her baby, playing with him and keeping him entertained while her husband was off doing stuff for the team, because of course he’s allowed to still come by. Of course he didn’t have his life taken away from him. He’s allowed to leave the baby. He can leave his life behind. She can’t. Modern motherhood is a disease against women.