Most, if not all, jobs give paid maternity leave to women who have had or are going to have a baby.

But what about the men? Shouldn’t they get time off too, since the child is also theirs?

There are many benefits to men taking leave to help with newborn babies.

If the baby is the first-born child, the additional support offered by the father is absolutely necessary and vital to how the child develops, to how involved the dad will be in later years, and even to how well the spousal relationship will hold up under the stress of a newborn.

By helping with a second-born child, the father can take a lot of the burden off of the mother by looking after the eldest child while she nurtures the newborn.

Fathers will also be directly involved in child care and in turn will feel more confident in their role as a parent.