Do mothers have an unfair advantage in the workplace? Certainly, Meghann Foye, an American magazine editor turned novelist, thinks so.

Jealous of co-workers clocking out on maternity leave, and tired of picking up the slack from female colleagues with a bulletproof excuse for avoiding overtime – namely, their children - 38-year-old Foye recently let rip.

In an interview with the New York Post, she demanded to know who decided that you had to be pregnant to take a year off work, and lamented that breeding appeared “the only path that provided a modicum of flexibility” in an age in which workers are expected to be slavishly on call.

But such has been the backlash against her suggestion that the child-free be allowed to go on “me-ternity leave”, that all women take time out for a life-enhancing career break, that Foye was forced to cancel a television appearance on Good Morning America.