"30% said they hadn't left the baby with anyone, including the baby's father for the entire first year."
This is nuts!
Judge if anyone wants, but I left my 3 week old with DH so I could go to the movies with my friend. I was going out of my mind and needed to get the fuck out of the house. DH did a great job because he's a great dad. I didn't worry for a second.
There is nothing judgeworthy about this. And I hate that women feel like this is not an option. I also consider this to be what Emma Watson was talking about when she says misogyny hurts men too. The byproduct of continuing to treat parenting as something women are born to but is mostly out of the capacity of men is that women don't feel comfortable leaving their husbands to care for their children. That shortchanges men, frays marriages, and harms relationships.
By casting fathers as fumbling idiots who can't possibly put a diaper on right, we further chain women and place more responsibility on them as a whole. That's not healthy for either gender.
There has to be more to the story, because in my experience in working in child welfare, we would not put kids in foster care based on one incident like that.
Given that I literally just experienced this last night (I was not the parent in the situation) I would agree with you. And this involved much younger kids.