As regards how things are mostly being done in this part of the world, when a woman gives birth, her mother or her mother inlaw would come around to help take care of the baby and the mother of the new born baby. Because as at that time, she won't have enough strength to do some certain things and then there are some kinds of treatment that needs to be done on her aswell. So someone needs to be around her, for some weeks or months pending the time she will fully regain her strength.
As it's most likely being practised that it's the mothers that usually come around to take care of the woman, so with this the man or our society thinks it's not really necessary to be with her wife at these times as far as he's doing his duty financially. I don't think this is good enough, we the men needs to understand that our family needs us too especially at that important stage. When a woman just gave birth, she won't be able to do house chores, at this point, the man should fill the gap.
However men also go through stress when their wife is in labour, they will be the one to run the errands, buy the necessary things, some hospitals can frustrate someone, the day I went to general hospital in my state, I knew what frustration is, the hospital is a three storey building, by the time you go up and down like three times, you'll know understand the meaning of stress. There's a different place you go to conduct test, another place to pay some money, there's a another place you need to go aswell where you'll pay so they will have your hospital card opened, it's then you can now have the opportunity to see the doctor. Without doing that, they won't attend to you.
Nevertheless, it might still sound somehow to say the father of the child should go for months of paternity leave probably due to what we're already used to, but I think staying back to also contribute to the taking care of her wife and new born baby is also paramount. Therefore I think a leave of one or two weeks is not a bad idea. But our society do not really support that idea, you hardly see a company that will grant the father of the child paternity leave, maybe we think the man is strong enough to handle the stress, or does not need to stay with the wife because he will have a family member to stay back with the wife.
As a man, our financial support alone is not enough, our presence or attention is also needed at home. In some instance, there might be a situation whereby the couple are not where their family is, in this kind of situation, I think the man needs some time to stay back at home with the wife so as to help do a lot of things. Let men also have some time to rest, we're not machines, even machines needs rest, else it will breakdown. Even if the leave won't be as long as that of the women but a week or two won't be a bad idea.
So as regards paternity leave for us, I think I'll be supporting the motion.
