Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy responded Thursday to sports radio host and world’s greatest dad Mike Francesa’s rant against paternity leave/being a not terrible father.
In his response, Murphy defended his decision to be with his wife and family following the birth of his child. (What a ridiculous thing to have to write. I am seriously so embarrassed for all of us in the world right now.)
“I got a couple of text messages about [Francesa’s comments], so I’m not going to sit here and lie and say I didn’t hear about it,” Murphy said. “But that’s the awesome part about being blessed, about being a parent, is you get that choice. My wife and I discussed it, and we felt the best thing for our family was for me to try to stay for an extra day — that being Wednesday — due to the fact that she can’t travel for two weeks.
“It’s going to be tough for her to get up to New York for a month. I can only speak from my experience — a father seeing his wife — she was completely finished. I mean, she was done. She had surgery and she was wiped. Having me there helped a lot, and vice versa, to take some of the load off. … It felt, for us, like the right decision to make.”
Now let’s compare Murphy’s take on what it means to be a parent to Francesa’s view of fatherhood.
“One day [of paternity leave] I understand. And in the old days they didn’t do that. But one day, go see the baby be born and come back. You’re a Major League Baseball player. You can hire a nurse to take care of the baby if your wife needs help,” he said during his Wednesday WFAN radio broadcast.
“What are you going to do? I mean you are going to sit there and look at your wife in a hospital bed for two days?” he continued. “Your wife doesn’t need your help the first couple of days; you know that you’re not doing much the first couple days with the baby that was just born.”
