That very much depends on circumstances. If you have two children born one right after another, probably not. If, however, your spacing is more spread, say, you have two children first, and then another child 8 years later, you'll easily need childcare for 15 consecutive years. My youngest sister is 11 years younger than me, and I'm not even the oldest of my siblings.
Are you going to argue that in a society that has relatively wide spread access to contraception that when you have children 11 years apart - it's not a choice? Come on. It's a choice to have kids 10 years apart, it's a choice as to how many, and how far apart you have children (assuming no biological limitations). Thus, you don't need childcare for 20 years if you have your 2-3 kids over a span of 4-5 years.
Also, I don't think you can blame income tax on the woman. The guy's salary is gonna get taxed regardless. So we need to either use pre-tax or post-tax salaries throughout all figures, not mix them and then blame the entire net difference, including tax, on the child support.
When we say "22k of 75k" it sounds like 1/3, but the 22k is net and the 75k is pre-tax. Once we normalize the 75k, we realize that 22k is almost half the person's net income.
I was shocked to learn that spousal maintenance was a thing with no kids in the picture. However, when there are kids involved, I feel like child support is probably not enough!
You don't need childcare for /20/ years. If you're a stay at home parent for 20 years, that is most definitely a choice.
> If you think $53k is rough for one person to survive on, wait till you see how hard it is for two people to survive on $22k!
I don't know why you think two people are surviving on $22k? It's one person and they can still get a job and keep the income. The $75k becomes $54,000 after tax. Which then becomes $32,000. So, bye bye 40% of your net income. In many cases - having a spouse living with you doesn't require spending 40% of your net income every month.