From the West Coast to Europe, there isn't that much choice of schedule. To Europe is usually overnight and coming back is day. I worked that for about 10 years and have been flying it as a passenger for two decades and that's always been the case.

The problem with stopping is that you could go through Chicago but that would mean stopping after about 3 hours. Not cutting much back. The East Coast is worse because it's entirely off the flight path (which goes up through northern Canada and the middle of Greenland). This adds about 3 hours of just flight time, not including transit.

Every time you change aircraft, you risk lost bags and add time to your journey, even when it's en route, which this definitely not (unless you can connect in Gander, Newfoundland). Also, with the new airport taxes, this could mean a much more expensive trip.

Once I was stuck in LAX for 8 hours, after arriving from London when a storm moved into SFO (I couldn't get on the SFO). That was tiring and I was years away from being a mother. I don't even like to think about delays like that with a child (or two or three) in tow!

Also, there's good old Customs and Immigration when you come back. You have to do that in your first port of entry, no exceptions. If your transatlantic is even slightly late, this could mean missing your connection which is kind of stressful with a child. Since it will be a day flight, this could be really exhausting for her. So stopping on a day flight wouldn't make any sense.

Once I was kept in Security so long we missed our flight. I was forced to connect through IAD, alone with two small children. We nearly had a weather cancellation on arrival and an earlier flight had cancelled so we nearly didn't get on our SFO, even when the weather cancellation was no longer a threat...

I'm so anti-connecting-with-children that I do sometimes pay more and usually take a 2 hour bus to catch a non-stop. For this trip (I'm in Ca. now), we took the bus at 4am to get the non-stop out of Frankfurt instead of flying and connecting through Paris at a later hour... I have a friend whose parents pick her up four hours' drive away so she doesn't have to connect with her four kids...

You get the idea.