“While Nordic citizens often don’t realize how good they have it, Americans seem not to realize how terribly they are being treated,” she writes in her book “The Nordic Theory of Everything.” Ms. Partanen points out that many Europeans pay only slightly higher income taxes than Americans do, while Swedes and Britons pay less, and all get far more in return. She concluded: “Maybe I wasn’t racked by anxiety because I came from a foreign country. Maybe I was racked by anxiety because I was becoming an American.”

Leaving America for Paris had the opposite effect. Suddenly it wasn’t all on me. I gradually understood why European mothers aren’t in perpetual panic about their work-life balance, and don’t write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them, and doing it competently.

Both candidates in the American election have taken stands on this. Mr. Trump (who once boasted that he never changed a diaper, which could explain why he married two Eastern Europeans) said a year ago that he was skeptical of paid family leave and opposed universal pre-K. The candidate wasn’t even clear on his own company’s parental policies: He claimed it offered in-house child care for employees, when in fact this was a paid service for hotel guests called Trump Kids.

Recently, in need of female votes, and at the behest of his daughter Ivanka, Mr. Trump presented a plan for six weeks of paid leave for mothers and tax credits for parents. He would also reduce regulations on child care “to allow the market to work.”

Hillary Clinton’s proposals include 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for men or women, capping child care costs, raising wages for child care workers (they’re now paid less than janitors); and providing pre-K for all 4-year-olds. She recently named Heather Boushey — who specializes in the issues of working families — as chief economist of her transition team.

Janet Gornick, an expert in gender and income inequality at the City University of New York, said members of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign team had approached her several times to get statistics and ask how various programs work. “If Ivanka wants to call me, I would absolutely give my statistics and my numbers to anybody, but they don’t call me,” she said.