This has been my experience as well, childcare alone is a pretty big part of my budget. I am definitely not better off financially by having a toddler :D
I still think of it as incentivizing in the same way the EV rebate helped encourage me to buy my first EV, even if the cost of the car still was more than I would have been willing to pay for an ICE car. It made a difficult thing (slightly) less difficult.