>"I've hired half a dozen female employees in the past four years[...]Three of them had kids later on, we hired substitutes who covered for them during maternity leave, and no biggy."

And if your company is too small to have that kind of money to throw around? What about tough financial times?

As much as I admire and believe that some of these laws/regulations do good, and mean well. I have to stress to individuals that they all have an effect on the economy/market. They skew things one way or the other, with constraints and incentives. E.g. The example above, it unfairly discriminates against companies that are unable to provide government-mandated perks to parents, or people interested in having children.