Nicola Brewer, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, last week launched a consultation into flexible working and called for a raft of new initiatives to benefit new mums and dads. Among her ideas is that men should receive at least three months leave on the birth of their child and 90% of their normal pay.

Last year the right to maternity leave was increased from six to nine months, and that will increase further to 12 months from December. Statutory Maternity Pay – approximately £117 a week – will be extended from 33 to 39 weeks. In addition, the Government now plans to allow women to transfer the second six months of maternity leave to the father of their baby.

There has been much discussion about this topic since Brewer's bombshell, most of it emotionally-charged blogs from relatively new mums whining about how hard it is to leave your baby, go back to work and then juggle the work family balance. I respectfully suggest they need to dry their eyes, get a grip and get on with it. That's life.

There has been a little informed comment, most of it from relatively older mums, who didn't get the benefit of all this extra time at home with their children, and who, while welcoming the extension to maternity leave, remember managing just fine when they had to do it themselves.

I haven't heard anything yet from a business perspective. As a result, we seem to be missing the real point here. In an ideal world, mum and dad sharing months and months off work caring for baby seems very fair and very forward thinking.

But is it too politically incorrect to say that the current proposals, and the new proposals, are bad for business? Is it chauvinistic to bin, as Sir Alan Sugar suggests happens regularly in the City, CVs from younger female job applicants to avoid the potential expense and hassle of maternity leave?

Well, clearly I must be both politically incorrect and chauvinistic. Speaking as a former MD of a multimillion-pound organisation and a mum who took nine days' maternity leave – seven of which were in hospital recovering from a caesarean section – I for one would definitely think twice about employing a married woman of child-bearing age. Indeed, if I'm entirely truthful, I would probably not even interview someone if I had the slightest inkling that they might, at some stage, consider starting a family.

Controversial? Undoubtedly. Letting down my sisters? Probably. Realistic? Absolutely.

You see, I'm not alone. A poll of 1,000 UK directors, carried out last year by YouGov, found that 19% avoided hiring all women of childbearing age. (Only 19%?) And a different survey carried out by Manchester-based Employment Law Advisory Services found that 68% of company chiefs and personnel managers would like the right to quiz job applicants on their family plans. And why not? Hiring is a risk in any organisation; surely employers should have the right to minimise risk to their business?

In any event, increasing any kind of paternal leave opens a vast can of worms. It can't be done in isolation without serious, in-depth consideration of the wider impact on SMEs, which make up such a crucial part of our already afflicted economy. As inflation and interest rates continue to increase over the next 18 months or so, any additional monetary impact on small business could be the difference between survival and failure.

So, to answer the feminists and equality lobbyists, it's not about sabotaging women's careers, or stereotyping, or discriminating against fathers. It simply comes down to money. Small businesses just can't afford maternity leave, paternity leave, any kind of leave. It matters not a jot whether it's mum or dad who takes six or nine months off work.

Either leaves a gap in the business that must be filled; it costs money to recruit someone else, to train them and pay them; it affects those business colleagues picking up the slack in the short term, it impacts on business continuity and can be detrimental to customer service, all of which affect the bottom line, which in turn restricts cash flow and threatens the future success of the company, the profitability and ultimately, job security.

It's a dangerous downward spiral. If the Government doesn't do something to support small businesses in meeting these new, increasingly challenging demands on their resources then arguing about maternity leave or paternity leave won't be an issue – because there won't be enough jobs in the first place.