I view it from a totally different perspective -- I took 2 months off at the start (and my wife left her job a while before that). Since we had no hired helper (nanny or doula) during that time and had limited grandparents help, it was mostly the 2 of us baby-caring during the first 2 months. It was both rewarding and exhausting, and we both agree that it was the most physically-intense time of our lives, to the point where I don't know how either of us would survive without the other person also being there.

I honestly don't know how parents who have to go back to work do it (especially in a family where one parent goes back to work very soon). There's so much work for the mother that without the father also being there, it seems to me it would create a major rift in the relationship when it comes to understanding what the other person is going through. I theorize that the father not being there (and being at work) during those early months is a foundation of the collapse of a spousal relationship years down the road, for many couples.