Appreciation
Why do we decide that certain kinds of work deserve applause, even reverence, while other kinds barely register? Some jobs get ignored completely, and the people doing them rarely see a paycheck for the effort. Growing a whole person inside your body is an astonishing thing to do. Feeding, holding, and raising that person afterward tends to get waved off as nothing special. Compare that to how a company treats someone who builds a product or runs a service: the pay arrives, and so do the titles, the awards, and the authority that comes with them.
Raising kids and keeping a household running usually comes at a cost to whoever takes it on. Steady employment records get hard to build. Pay tends to be lower, and because of that, social security and retirement savings often fall short of what a person needs once they reach their later years. The hours that might have gone toward climbing in a profession go instead to diapers, homework, and laundry, so the experience that advances a career never accumulates.
Nobody thanks you for a clean house; they only remark on it when it isn't clean. Your degrees don't change the script much. If you're a woman, the assumption follows that you'll run the home, carry and raise the children, and squeeze in a career if the hours allow, or else hire someone to cover the gap, which swallows a good chunk of whatever you earn. There are upsides worth naming. All that scrubbing and lifting counts as physical activity, and the payoff is a tidy, calm place to come home to.
A healthy pregnancy, children who feel loved and carry some self-assurance, kids who understand limits: these are good things to aim for. They make the world a little easier for the rest of us to live in.