This is a conversation that ambitious women have been having for decades. To the point where it's a cliche. Having it about men and women is valuable, having it be about them separately I think masks some of the structural problems- e.g. better childcare, more and better laid out parental leave(1), etc.

Two things I've heard from different ambitious women: "To really achieve, you need a wife" is something I've heard a lot- that it takes one parent sacrificing some of their career priority; traditionally that was the woman but it in theory could be the man (2), it just rarely is.

The other thing an ambitious woman told me once is that her mom told her "husband, career, kids, pick two." Basically, there is just only enough energy for a given person per day to invest in two of them. I've seen some women who managed, from the outside, to at least look successful at all three, but it's rare indeed.

1: When my kid was born the software company I worked for (I'm an American at an American company, but this was an area of competition for software devs at the time) offered a 14 week paid parental leave, even for men. Most men took a four week ("secondary caregiver" leave) and overlapped it with their wives 12 week unpaid FMLA. I took mine (14 week "primary caregiver") after my wife's leave expired, such that our kid had one of us caring for him every moment of his first six months. I remain convinced that was absolutely vital as the basis for both my relationship with my son and with my wife- she had to rely on me, trust me to care for the kid, and I couldn't hand him off, it was all on me every day. And so we both developed the parental muscles, could trust that the other one understood the reality of the situation, in a way that many father's don't get a chance. And that experience convinced me that the US needs maternal leave, obviously, but it also needs paternity leave- and the policies need to be designed such that the woman has to be back at work for at least some of the paternity leave, it can't all be used concurrently.

2: In a recent survey of American households https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-gr... about 55% of American heterosexual marriages the man makes 60% or more of the household income, about 30% both halves of the couple were between 40-60%, and just 16% saw the woman make more than 60% of the household income. In the majority of the 16% the woman still spent more time on unpaid household chores and carework than the man they were out-earning. Only in the 6% of heterosexual marriages where the woman earned 100% of the income did the number of hours per week in unpaid labor of men even equal that of their female partner.

Being ambitious and being a dad