And you can do that in Denmark too - but as Lilla so rightly pointed out there are cultural difference from country to country - nearly all mothers work here.
of, course it depends of parents if they have to work, my father was danish , so my "farmor" grandmother, she stayed at home and my mother too so i guess i am doing the same as them!
It does not only depend on the parents. The structure of a particular country and the way the labour marked in this country is regulated is even more important when it comes to the possible choices parents can make.
According to The Danish Ministry of Empolyment
Beskæftigelsesministeriet - Nøgletal in 2004 the participation rate for men was 79,7 % and for women it was 73,4 %. (The participation rate is the amount of 16 - 66 - year-olds, who is employed or temporarily unemploy - compared to the entire population). The entire structure of the Danish welfaresystem is build upon regulations that makes it more or less impossible for a houshold to exist unless both parents work. One income simply isn't sufficient if you want to have a life without financial difficulties.
According to this link http:
http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/560/article/748/ the goal for the EU is a participation rate for women at 60% by the end of 2010. Denmark has the highest participation rate for women in Europe. Sweden and Finland comes in second. At the bottom is Malta, Italy and Greece with a participation rate on 33 % - 46%.
A very high participation rate for both women and men in at country also makes a high demand for nursery schools/kindergardens and it also influences the decisions of the minority of parents who does not work. If you want your small children to be among other small children during the daytime, they have to be enrolled at a nursery school/kindegarden. But as a nonworking parent one has the luxury of only needing them to be there parttime if one wishes so.
I do not know whether the later is the case with Christian and Isabella - but I would think so........
Of cause it is possible for non-working parents and working parents to let their small children meet with other small children in the weekend or after 5 p.m. But as UserDane wrote the later would be after an already long day (for both the vast majority of the small children and their parents as well).
Furthermore it is not a choice for danish parents to leave their small children in the care of grandparents while going to work - as both grandparents are working as well. According to the link underneath the average age of withdrawal from the labour market in Denmark in 2005 was for women 60.1 and for men 62.2.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-07-097/EN/KS-SF-07-097-EN.PDF 
. I had the "using of Winsor" from a previous post made by another member.
