You just described one of quite a few reasons (higher education falls into same category, overall security could be mentioned in such topic too) that I consider some parts of western Europe a better place to live and raise kids than anything US can provide. Despite having much lower numbers on paychecks alone.

I get that system needs to push folks into working hard and motivate exceptional efforts (and luck), but sometimes this goes into properly bad directions where few gain and majority loses. In any functional society, all this is never isolated and it has ripple effects.