One of my favorite parts of being a mother is that even though we moms fight and debate and can be very mean to one another online (and elsewhere), there is a certain level of camaraderie that comes from both being in the same boat. No matter how different your philosophies of child rearing, in the end, moms stick up for one another.

But Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones is no comrade. In her latest column, she rails against maternity leave. "I just don't understand the lack of work ethic in young women today," she says after learning a woman she worked with will be on a long maternity leave.

Um, hello? Since when does taking a maternity leave to have a baby mean a woman lacks "work ethic"?

Forget everything you've heard about (the lack of) maternity leave. Ignore the mommy track, and the high cost of day care that makes it prohibitive to have a job. It's time to look on the bright side of tiny people completely upending your life and making it all about them, them, them. You know who I'm referring to: babies.

Maybe you're one of those ladies who decided enough was enough with the day job and are now staying home with your new baby. Good for you! Sure you'll avoid the headaches of day care to office commutes, wondering if your sitter actually remembered your baby was lactose intolerant, or cursing your husband for not realizing that you've been working hard all day as well. But you might also be missing the biggest career opportunity of your life.

Here are the five ways that baby's can actually boost your career, instead of tearing down your mental acuity little by little.

You know maternity leave in the United States is horrible when a conservative Fox News anchor calls out our current system, or lack thereof, for being in the "Dark Ages." Megyn Kelly kicked some butt for moms everywhere when she nailed a naysayer to the wall on her first week back from her own maternity leave. Where was this kind of talk during the 2008 election? Just wondering. 

However, it's about time a major figure in the conservative world stood up for women and the sad state of America's maternity leave. Of course, Megyn Kelly did it because she was attacked by another Fox News conservative. I'm telling you, even with three months paid time off, I would not want to work at that organization. Although if they upped it to the proper one-year leave that we all need, I might reconsider.

So what "moronic" things did the other guy, Mike Gallagher, have to say about maternity leave? Get ready to be royally ticked off, ladies.

Ahhh, maternity leave. Those months (weeks? days?) where you simply stay home and care for your baby and, hopefully, yourself. If you are lucky enough to get it and are a mom in the U.S., it's not going to last very long, so you really want to take advantage of every second. But sometimes reality sets in, and your maternity leave becomes more about those other obligations that aren't cute and tiny. Not cool, but it happens.

One mom over at Blogging Away Debt describes what is fairly common in today's world of being completely plugged in at all times. She's on maternity leave, but her workplace is still bombarding her with phone calls, emails, text messages. I'm willing to bet this has happened to most working moms. But what this brave new mom did is not what most of us would have. And while I applaud her, I also fear she won't have a job to go back to when her leave is up.

Robyn Roche-Paull is a serious badass. That doesn’t sound like something you say about a lactation consultant, those gentle creatures encouraging calm and kvelling about endorphins, but Roche-Paull isn’t your average LC. She’s a veteran of the U.S. Navy -- where she was an aircraft mechanic -- and breastfed her son while on active duty.

She’s also the author of Breastfeeding in Combat Boots, a book intended for military moms who want information and support for their own breastfeeding efforts. If her tips help moms figure out how to breastfeed in combat zones and on military planes (like the mom to the left), surely they can be of use to any working mom.

So hup, two, three, four -- nurse your kid like you’re at war!

Maternity leave can go from the most exhilarating time of your life to the most boring. When baby's up, you're up. When baby's asleep, you're trying to sleep ... but how many of us can do that? Moms, you need to find some way to amuse yourself.

And Emily Cleaver, mom to the delicious 3-month-old Arthur, has come up with the coolest way EVER. The freelance writer is owner of Studio Arthur, a blog dedicated to photos of her little boy re-creating classic movies. Well, OK, technically it's Cleaver setting up the cute little baby in the midst of famous scenes from the likes of Alien (above) and The Godfather.

Before I became a parent, if someone told me that I'd become so intimately aware of the laws surrounding the rights of a breastfeeding mother, I would have rolled my eyes. It's a natural mom-to-baby act that women have been doing for centuries, I'd have said. What does the law have to do with it? As the story of Sashay Brown, a female Washington, D.C. cop forced into an unpaid leave to keep feeding her baby, proves, a whole heckuva lot.

See, the Washington, D.C. police force provides its working moms with lactation rooms for pumping their breast milk to take home to baby. Federal law says they have to. So they do. But the way the force sees it, hanging a sign on a door that says "mothers can pump here" is enough. They don't have to actually give moms real access to it. That, America, is the problem with breastfeeding laws in America.

Michelle Obama's Let's Move Child Care campaign is good -- teaching us healthy eating habits for kids and encouraging child care facilities to give children expressed breast milk from mom. But I think she needs to do more. It's not enough.

Breastfeeding is natural and so good for you and your baby, and it's free, but without getting all mom activist and showing you my true colors on where I stand there (ha, already revealed!), I just want to add that I support all mothers and believe moms in America deserve more from our country. So many of us want to breastfeed but instead of our kids getting it straight from the tap, we're forced to pump with the worst manual pump on the market. All while third world countries have the hospital grade hands-free electric one. I'm speaking metaphorically here. In short, this country sucks for moms.