Reading it generously, I think the cultural problem is supposed to be that parents are expected to go back to work too quickly, not specifically that women are. “Mom” has just come through the sequence of quotes, making it unnecessary gendered.
It could also be seen as a cultural problem that both parents are generally expected to work nowadays, and it would be nice to be able to expect that families had some adult at home (but we’d hope that in a more egalitarian society nowadays the gender balance would be more equal — although men can lift larger laundry baskets on average so maybe we should end being the at-home ones more than 50% of the time, I dunno).
It could also be seen as a cultural problem that both parents are generally expected to work nowadays, and it would be nice to be able to expect that families had some adult at home (but we’d hope that in a more egalitarian society nowadays the gender balance would be more equal — although men can lift larger laundry baskets on average so maybe we should end being the at-home ones more than 50% of the time, I dunno).