Yes, fathers should have paternity leave. My daughter is due to give birth next month. My SIL gets 3 days paid paternity leave. YES, he is taking it to be with my daughter and their son.

and we had a full 90 days following the birth to take it.

I took the full week for each of my three kids without so much as a whimper from anybody that I work for or with.

bitches when they talk about maternity leave, and men aren't being emo hipsters when they say they would like some time off to bond with their kids. They're being human, and employers would do well to remember that.

Their daughter, Ryan Elizabeth Shaw-Hayes, was born in November 2011. Their son, David Emanuel Shaw-Hayes, was born in March 2014 - from wiki

Love the names. Two of my grandsons are Ryan and David and I named them both. Altho I'm not that crazy about the name Ryan for a girl but to each his/her own lol.

Hayes is married to Kate Shaw, assistant professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.[26] Hayes and Shaw resided in Washington, D.C., until they moved to New York City, where All In with Chris Hayes is produced.[27] Their daughter, Ryan Elizabeth Shaw-Hayes, was born in November 2011.[28] Their son, David Emanuel Shaw-Hayes, was born in March 2014.[29]

As I read in one of the comments - there will be MANY first games of the season. There is ONLY ONE birth of first child. And it's a GAME. Okay? A damn fucking GAME. This is your new family we're talking about here. Baseball games, and all other sports games, for that matter, come and go. Seasons come and go. Teams come and go and team management comes and goes. Your family, on the other hand, is forever. And dare I ask - so what if it was the first OR the second birth? So what? This gentleman (in EVERY sense!) wanted to be there for his wife and their child. That's a REAL man, to me!

I think that boomer jerk is just that - a fucking JERK! My reaction when I heard those loutish comments yesterday was - "see if YOU get any tonight, pal." Let's give HIM a C-section, then.

What a JERK!!! When I had our first - I couldn't even get out of bed for three days - and that was after I got home from the hospital. I was damn near incapacitated. If my husband hadn't been there to bring me pitchers of water when my breast-feeding finally kicked in and I was thirstier than I'd ever been in my life, and the baby was feeding and then peeing and puking on me around the clock, I NEEDED him there. We didn't have help. I couldn't run back and forth to the kitchen to get more water and just leave the baby for a few minutes. It was physically impossible. I was damn glad and grateful to have him hovering around all the time. And he's enough of an evolved, enlightened, liberated man that he WANTED to be there, participating fully. And he was a World-Class delivery coach, too, btw.

It made the whole experience after a very arduous pregnancy (that actually threatened my life by the last weeks) and delivery much easier to get through, for me. It wasn't just that I wanted or appreciated him being there, I freakin' NEEDED him there! And I'm damn glad he was there. So is he - still, to this very day.

However, I can see why there are two sides to the issue. 1) there are many people who paid a lot of money to see him pitch and he made a willful decision not to even when physically capable. 2) the pitcher has a HUGE influence on the outcome of a game and his teamates are counting on him to be there. If I were in Murphy's position, I would have skipped the opener and played in game two.

He's an infielder

Oh and this is the beginning of the season. The Mets stink anyway!!

But let's face it: It's just a freaking game. Being there for your kid is far more important.

would you begrudge him a few days?

work two or three jobs to make ends meet. We are people, not units of GDP. We need to have lives not based solely on making sure that business is guaranteed profits and that business assumes risks without having their thumbs on both the labor market and the retail market. Period. Then we can attend to our families in a manner that provides some quality of life. We need to stop playing their game and develop one of our own.

and many of them require that part of it be taken by the father.

You summed it up quite nicely.

Don't know why it suddenly became an issue other than the Mets need all the help they can get.

Congratulations to the Hayes and to the Murphy families on their new additions! Daniel Murphy is a second baseman for the New York Mets. Mr. Murphy proves he is a real man, while the whiny men criticizing him prove they have real issues about their own masculinity.

It's appalling that the workplace thinks that women will give birth over the weekend and return on Monday, and I'm barely exaggerating here. Worse yet is that there are some women who do essentially that, and some highly paid women who can afford to hire all the care needed to mind the baby and who simply don't understand that it's not that situation with most women.

Fathers are very important in the lives of their children. They deserve paternity leave every bit as much as the mothers deserve maternity leave.

I consider that the most egregious part of his statement.

Just cut open that woman's body and make so that she'll necessarily require the same in all subsequent births.
(Yes, I know it's possible to have vaginal birth after a C-section, but fairly risky, and usually not done.)

Rather cavalier of any person to suggest major surgery for another.

It's just such an obnoxious suggestion. My wife had some choice words when I relayed the story.

Instead of Opening Day. With a whole season left to play.

I'm totally behind parental leave, father-child bonding....but all work days and responsibilities are not equal.

A father being there for his kid is more important. Fatherhood is a vocation, not a hobby.

We get one of those EVERY year! You only get ONE Birth of First Child - EVER.

EXACTLY right