"You'll be breeding like rabbits now I suppose,” remarked the acerbic deputy editor of the newspaper where I worked in 1975, when the first maternity leave legislation came in. It was long fought for and rightly welcomed: before that it was accepted as normal to be given the sack when you were pregnant. You made your bed and you laid in it.

The women's movement was vigorous, vociferous (and largely childless) and fought on principle. So when the law went through there was jubilation: working women had finally got a basic equal right.

I was one of the first grateful beneficiaries. There were very few women in the office and those who had babies tended to leave anyway, from choice. Families could still get by on one income then. It was undoubtedly a benefit for me: between 1976 and 1983 I took four maternity leaves - each 16 weeks long, and a man deputised for me during the last three.

Afterwards I worked my damnedest to appear as childless as possible - working through the night, zipping home to breastfeed while everyone else swanned off to lunch. For women it is a cruel fact that their most ambitious, energetic, employable decades coincide with the optimum window for starting a family. Having got this far, however, no true feminist wanted to appear to be taking advantage of an employer.

Now the pendulum has swung, hoisting us all with a vicious petard. A year off after the birth of a child, nine months of it paid? I was truly aghast when my pregnant daughter told me about the extended maternity leave rights.

Of course young women are regarded highly in the workplace. Of course all women must work, from economic expediency. And it would be unthinkable to turn the clock back to pre-1975. But, as in so much legislative change, there is a gap where the common sense clause should be.

For employers the coincidence of women's employability and their fertility is a double-bind. As Sir Alan Sugar said, maternity leave makes him “bin the CVs of women of child-bearing age”. Brutally put - but understandable on the brink of a recession.

Nicola Brewer reminded us, rightly, that generous maternity benefits entrench the traditional view that children are the responsibility of women.

In fact, increasing numbers of young men would like to share the extended parental leave and many earn less than their partners, making this the better option financially.

All reasonable women, who are just as likely as men to become employers, yearn for some rationalisation of family legislation - including a long-overdue answer to the even more pressing question of who pays for childcare when that one year is over?

Times recommends

• Live chat: Thrifty ways to update your winter wardrobe
• Is anybody out there really listening?
• Nutrition Q&A: Will eating late make me fat?