The head-hunters do not surprise us so much as point to the elephant in the staff room: how pregnancy and the subsequent leave affect not just an individual but the workplace.
Last year, the editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, said mothers' rights were making women unemployable.
"What I don't understand is the idea that you should be able to keep exactly the same job, with all the advantage that entails, and work less for it, regardless of how that affects the office or colleagues,'' she wrote.
Was the forthright Shulman being provocative or simply expressing concerns around an issue that dare not speak its name?
Never before has work-life balance been more difficult to achieve, and this at a time when social awareness, changing gender roles, skills shortage, family-friendly policies and global technologies should, by rights, be making the hybrid life of the working parent - especially women - easier.
But if we don't start to have decent discussions about rights, responsibilities, equality and equity and soon, then we are going to see a return to the dark ages and a time where some women, like Shulman's mother, had to pretend that pregnancy was a bit like the common cold - inconvenient and not worth talking about if she were to be taken seriously at work.
Perhaps the problem lies in the way we discuss parents in the workforce. We hear a great deal about working mothers, but an almost deafening silence about working fathers.
This is because for Australian fathers, working is normalised as both their right and natural role in society.
Certainly, paternity leave is still regarded as a bonus, not as mandatory.
Sweden has long been seen as the global role model for parental leave. Not only do women get liberal maternity benefits, but men get 13 months' parental leave, two months of it is fully paid.
Suddenly, our paltry policies seem to offer little more than a pregnant pause as opposed to a real solution.
Although there are many stories of women who successfully raise a family and juggle a career as well as those who productively navigate the return to work, there are also those who encounter opposition and resistance every step of the way.
Not every woman wants to be an executive, but neither do they want to lose their rung on the ladder, their shift, their position, because they are starting a family.
So how do we address this?
We start by rethinking what being a working parent means.
For too long, women have operated under the delusion that they can have it all. This myth has turned both work and home into a competitive and guilt-ridden arena - and not just between the sexes but within them as well.
We tend to compare ourselves to other women, such as France's Justice Minister, Rachida Dati, who returned to work a week after a caesarean section, or our male colleagues, and despair that we don't make the grade.
It doesn't help that when we read about or see a successful sportswoman, politician, media identity or celebrity, the tag ``mother'' is placed after them.
It's the new skill on a very public CV that sets up expectations that cannot be met and overlooks the role played by partners and professional and personal networks.
On the surface, it looks encouraging and aspirational, but it is more often depressing and destructive.
We tend to respond to the question of maternity leave using what could be called a deficit model when what we need to do is encourage women to negotiate reasonably about what the workplace can do to keep their skills.
Trade-offs and sacrifices can and do work both ways - and not just at work.
As the glass ceiling turns into a dark, competitive social mirror, we seem to have lost sight of what we need to value and where our responsibilities lie.
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