I can’t speak from personal experience (personally, I prefer cats), but it is perfectly clear to me that when a couple has a baby, it is one of the most enriching experiences in life.

The expression on their faces says it all.

What I do have experience of, however, is the trouble that parenthood can cause within the workplace.

I know a number of extremely able women who, I am sure, have failed to get jobs or win promotion because they are of child-bearing age and might therefore prove “unreliable”. Their skills and talents have been wasted, and it has been not just their loss, but that of their employers and prospective employers, too.

I have also encountered the elaborate juggling acts that some employers have to perform to accommodate the legally enshrined rights and needs of mothers. Stretched rotas, tired colleagues and a frequently fruitless search for suitable temporary cover are just some of the consequences.

So when Nicola Brewer, the new chief executive of the Equalities And Human Rights Commission, says our maternity benefits system may be harming women in the workplace, I am forced to say I agree.

I also think she’s right to say that new laws giving women 12 months’ paid maternity leave will only make matters worse.

Sadly, I can only give two cheers, not three, for her proposed solution: extend paternity rights to men, so that they can stay at home with the kids if they choose to do so.

The equality-lover in me shouts “at last!” at the idea that men, as well as women, should be able to choose parenthood over a career. I’m suspicious of the mystique of motherhood, which suggests that men somehow love their children less, or lack the ability to care for them properly.

Certainly, once breastfeeding is over, I can’t see that it matters if a man or a woman looks after a child, as long as they give it the love and attention it deserves.

The proposals would also stymie those employers who are tempted to chuck women’s CVs in the bin for fear of impending motherhood, as Sir Alan Sugar has suggested many do.

And yet.

The undeniably noble aims of legislation which honours and supports parenthood as a crucial role in society still sit uncomfortably with the needs particularly of small businesses, for whom the long-term loss of a worker can mean the difference between success and failure.

It all leaves me wondering how we ever used to manage before the legislation came along.

The human race did somehow reproduce itself; people did support themselves; families did survive.

Sadly, there were probably a lot of neglected, latch-key kids and exhausted, miserable parents along the way.

The solution eludes me. At least the way forward proposed by Nicola Brewer appears, on the face of it, to be fair – or equally unfair – to all.

What is happening to mens’ hair this year? It was bad enough when they looked like shaven-headed hoodlums. When I noticed one or two growing out their brutal haircuts, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But now comes a new plague – wrap-round hair.

More and more men seem to be training their collar-length hair to ramble like creeper vines around their heads.

You’d swear it was a comb-over except that the wearers clearly face no follicular challenges.

Maybe it’s what happens after you wear a tea-cosy on your head regardless of the fact that it’s 30 degrees outside.

Makes you almost nostalgic for the number-one head shave.