punish_her: Stop putting things in my mouth which I never said or shut the fuck off. I didn't say a woman should be paid when she's not working. I said that it's a short-sighted policy to punish (and yeah, I agree with js207 that punish is the wrong word. I don't have a better one, though) a woman just because she has to take a time-out to raise her kids.
Also, even though I am apparently a misandrist, I call discrimination for males on this, too. If a father decides to have children and take some time off, he faces the same problem as a mother. Having a career and spending more than just a few minutes with your kids is virtually impossible. It just happens much less that it's the father and not the woman, so we don't get to hear about it as much.
Might make sense for the individual company. Yeah, I guess it definitely does. But for a society, it's a dead end in the long run.