I was reading something in MT this week about the problems women face when they come back from maternity leave. And although I was shocked by the statistics, and hate the idea of anyone assuming I can’t do something for a gender-specific reason, I must admit that as a small business owner, I can’t help but get a sinking feeling whenever one of my staff announces that she’s pregnant…

The thing is, pregnancy doesn’t have much of an upside for me. Professionally speaking, in a small company like ours, losing a key member of staff for an unspecified period of time is a major pain in the backside. For a start I have to go through the rigmarole of hiring a replacement – and the chances of finding someone brilliant who wants a temporary job at precisely that time are slim, to say the least. Even if they do turn out to be good, it’ll still take ages to get them trained up to the same level. While at the same time I’m shelling out a not-insignificant sum in maternity pay to someone doing zero work (which frankly, I can live without at the moment).

And if Mum does eventually decide to come back – at which point she’ll probably be completely distracted and resentful about being away from her spawn – you either have to keep two people in the job, or you get rid of the cover person and lose the benefit of all that training and experience they’ve accumulated in the past year.

I’m prepared to admit there might also be a personal element to this. As you may have gathered, I’m not really the maternal type, so I don’t really get it. But regardless of that, once you’re the ‘wrong’ side of 30, you’re socially conditioned to feel like a barren old maid when you hear about someone younger than you getting pregnant. There’s nothing like it to make you feel well and truly ‘on the shelf’, as my mother delicately puts it – even though I hate that concept with every fibre of my being.

That’s not to say there aren’t advantages. At least in my experience, the people concerned have always been thrilled to bits about getting pregnant. And I like having happy people in the office, because they tend to make other people happy too. A happy workforce is a productive workforce, after all (when they’re not looking at blurry X-ray photos).

Now I’m painfully aware that I’m part of the problem here (not to mention a disgrace to the sisterhood). As long as people like me see pregnancy like this, mothers are always going to be second-class citizens in the workplace, and they’re always going to be a minority in the upper echelons of the workforce. I firmly believe that’s a bad thing.

So I’m trying to teach myself that it’s really an opportunity (apart from the old maid bit, obviously). Generally speaking, I’m pretty good at that – when you’re an entrepreneur, it kind of comes with the territory – so I see no reason why I can’t ultimately do the same with maternity leave. Maybe I can find a replacement that’s even better? Maybe I can promote a junior person to give them more responsibility? Maybe it’s an opportunity to re-think the way we deliver a particular product or service?

One of my friends – whose feminist views make me look like Bernard Manning in comparison, admittedly – goes even further. She reckons that when the woman returns to the workplace, she’ll rise to even greater heights due to her new-found confidence, resourcefulness and multi-tasking skills. It’s a nice idea, though I’m not sure I buy it yet. Although if I ever do get round to having babies, people had better start saying that about me.