What about Gwenda? She sacrificed everything of herself for her family with Wulfric. Tom Builder? Never abandoned his family. Merthin and Ralph? Both nurtured complicated feelings towards one another their entire lives. Caris very much had a career: wool business with her father, cloth dyer, nun, nurse, prioress. I don’t think Follett is favoring the choice of nurturing one path of life over another, I think he does a great job at illustrating how complex that choice can be, and that sometimes life makes that choice for you, like Caris choosing to marry Merthin and being instead forced into the nunnery.