Sports radio personalities Boomer Esiason and Mike Francesca, among others, virtually accused Murphy of baseball treason and urged him to get back into the lineup. It was only when Mets manager Terry Collins and a number of professional athletes came to the defense of Murphy that the radio personalities walked back their comments and apologized for them.
Never mind that the MLB has provided for up to three full days of paternity leave since 2011 – the only major sports league in the country that has such a provision. Or that baseball is something of an atypical profession, in that it's seasonal and games can be scheduled virtually any day of the week.
Unlike football or basketball, baseball squads tend to be leaner and highly dependent on their first-string players. So it could conceivably be argued that, under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), baseball starters could be considered exempt from taking unpaid paternity leave, as are some top-tier executives of larger companies, whose absence might be considered a "hardship."
And never mind that new fathers or mothers are only entitled to up to six weeks unpaid leave combined under the FMLA.
And while we're playing the game of "never mind," the United States is basically the only developed country that doesn't provide new parents of either gender paid maternity or paternity leave for six months to a year; sometimes longer – notably throughout the EU and Canada. And definitely never mind that all of those other nations also offer universal healthcare to their populations, but that's another story.
Let's remember that the concept of "paternity leave" from work is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't that long ago that wives were lucky if their husbands showed up in the waiting room while they delivered. Fathers being present during delivery and taking part in the birth process essentially started with the Baby Boom generation.
For the better part of the last four decades, the workplace conversation regarding childbirth, child care and careers has been about the mother: working mothers who "want to have it all;" high-powered working women whose career paths sometimes come into question once they're perceived to be on the "mommy track;" or the pros and cons of being a stay-at-home or working mom vis-à-vis the benefits to the child.
Well, perhaps it's time that the conversation shifted to be more about dads in the workplace – or at least working "parents," and not just mothers. It seems the Daniel Murphy incident may have started a national conversation about working fathers and their rights.
In an age where most two-parent households can't afford the luxury of having a stay-at-home parent of either gender, who's to say that Mom has to be the one to take time off from work, paid or unpaid? After all, as President Obama reminded us recently, women still earn roughly 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men. It'll be all he can do to get the minimum wage bumped up by the end of his presidency.
So maybe the conversation among HR professionals needs to be about equality in the workplace on a number of levels – paternity leave being one such issue. And maybe the take-away here is that people were upset about a ballplayer taking off three whole days to spend time with his new family. Daniel Murphy may not have any idea of what he started. We haven't heard the end of this.