"It turns out that generous maternity leave and flexible rules on part-time work can make it harder for women to be promoted � or even hired at all."

Front page teaser for a NYT article titled "When Family-Friendly Policies Backfire."

Note that the unintended consequences are not limited to the working women who have children. Even women who intend to forgo motherhood and put all their effort into work are still going to look like potential mothers. 

The article ends with an effort at the upbeat:

Perhaps the most successful way to devise policies that help working families but avoid unintended consequences, people who study the issue say, is to make them gender neutral. In places like Sweden and Quebec, for instance, parental leave policies encourage both men and women to take time off for a new baby.

Yeah, well, but perhaps not. Who takes this encouragement to spend more time with babies? Who passes up this benefit because they feel they must press on in their career (and because they're not as interested in babies or because they're not the ones who can breastfeed)? I don't see how gender-neutral policies are going to avoid these unintended consequences.