My salary is good - I'm a skilled computer professional. A lousy salary
would be 1200$ per month, but you would get reduction in the price of the
day care.

If I had to pay 60% of my salary in day care I might make other decisions. I
also have 5 weeks of paid (even a little higher paid) vacation a year. I
have extra 5 days for family caring (sick children, playing hooky like
today) so it's not so hard to be a full time working mom. BTW, my full time
is 35 hours with no paid lunch.

so more comparable to my husbands job, but with the tax bands his take
home pay is not very much more than if I worked full time.

Basically working is of little financial benefit for me, but I enjoy the
16 hours I do. I would enjoy working in the kind of job you do even more,
but its difficult to get that kind of thing part time. Though I have been
very fortunate, from the 1st May I will be working as a research
assistant, in the computer science department of Cambridge University,
this is a slight pay increase, but still of not much benefit, but it's a
step towards me completing my phd.