Rights or privileges?

Fathers want to be left holding the baby:

The health service is simply used to doling out advice to new mothers and doling out expectations, too, with no sense that fathers should be made similarly aware from the very beginning. When it comes to newly borns, fathers are considered an optional extra, and this father, for one, finds that deplorable.

Just by reading the silly and sometimes sexist comments on this article, how can any reasonable person not come to realise that there is no ‘one size fits all’ policy? IMHO, if a couple chooses to have all the bells and whistles (entire family present, private room, etc. etc.) when delivering an infant in hospital, they can jolly well pay for it.

All the NHS should be obligated to provide is a no frills, hygienic (hah) obstetrics service. No frills mean only the health of the newborn and mother are their direct concern. It’s not about considering a single mother’s feelings or providing father-baby bonding time, it’s about delivering babies efficiently and doing what they can to prevent complications. In this case, a father’s ‘feelings’ are most definitely an optional extra!

(Who wouldn’t want a fairly good-looking man like Andrew O’Hagan, if he was your baby-daddy, to be present, though?)