Honestly, as someone who kinda grew up with two super-achieving career minded parents (on the scale of "majorly influenced their respective academic fields"), it's possible to keep a top tier career going strong and raise kids.
By their example, you have to be pretty ruthless about work/housework/childraising division, though: my parents split weekends and weekdays, so when I was young it was either the day we spent with mom or the day we spent with dad, with a few evenings and dinners together, and as we got older we had a lot of unsupervised freedom (not really a bad thing, imo, but it might mean not living in a crowded suburb or a city). However, it's certainly possible to be on the forefront of the /field/ you are in and still raise reasonably well adjusted kids evenly, it just takes a lot of effort from /both/ parents and a lot of conscious organization and division of tasks. They did have very flexible work schedules (including being completely able to work on weekends), though, which probably made it a lot easier than the (traditional) "You will work from 9am-5pm on Monday through Friday" most corporations (still) expect.
You're right, some people can pull it off and successfully. It's great for those who want to and can. I think my implicit point is not everyone _should_ want to. Career is not an end goal. Career affords us a path to a life we desire. Some people actually enjoy and want a real livable work-life balance --not just the HR PR diluted version.
However, yes, it's great that some people are single minded and discover new drugs and treatments for disease and contribute to accelerated human progress.
I'd say that career is a path to afford us what we find satisfying in life. For some people, that's more time with family and friends, hiking, knitting, or social dance. For some, it might be watching netflix. If that's what satisfies, that's what you should do.
For some folks, though, it is their career activities that they find satisfying (i.e. it is the end goal, because it's what they'd be doing with their time anyways, so it's nice that somebody is paying them to do it full time). My parents were genuinely in the last category, but not everyone is or needs to be.
By their example, you have to be pretty ruthless about work/housework/childraising division, though: my parents split weekends and weekdays, so when I was young it was either the day we spent with mom or the day we spent with dad, with a few evenings and dinners together, and as we got older we had a lot of unsupervised freedom (not really a bad thing, imo, but it might mean not living in a crowded suburb or a city). However, it's certainly possible to be on the forefront of the /field/ you are in and still raise reasonably well adjusted kids evenly, it just takes a lot of effort from /both/ parents and a lot of conscious organization and division of tasks. They did have very flexible work schedules (including being completely able to work on weekends), though, which probably made it a lot easier than the (traditional) "You will work from 9am-5pm on Monday through Friday" most corporations (still) expect.