Sod that. National health care can do this, and do it well, because I've experienced it, and even with perfect care my partner was needed (by me)
If a woman had just had major surgery and came on here saying that her DP expected to swan off home while she stayed up and looked after a baby (after barely sleeping for a week before, and poorly sleeping for months before that) he'd be quite rightly vilified for not playing his part.
If people are going to a consultant the advice is often to take an advocate. If going to babycare classes, you'd expect the partner to go along.
A small study shows the majority preferred it, anecdotally I preferred it, the reasons against are:
Violence/abuse - which happens during the day too, and hospitals - particularly post-natal wards already have policies to deal with it.
I don't want a man seeing me - well, I don't want women seeing me either - the ward is the problem, not the men then.
The care should just be better - yes, it should, but the partner isn't just there for that.
No, you shouldn't be put in the position of policing - again, that should be the nurses, again the partners help some, and hinder others - but the service is the problem, not the partners.
And yes, he did leap up to my every need, so that I wasn't ringing the bell to get help instead, or trying to get to the toilet/crying baby whilst still waiting for the epidural to wear off and falling, or to find out how on earth I go about getting food at some point, or remembering to ask about pain med prescriptions at discharge since no-one else had remembered, or wound care advise which no-one had offered when I was still rather under the weather (to put it mildly) having just had a baby. This meant that the breast-feeding help, the midwives, the bloody mattress turners, could all go and help the people who needed it, rather than me who'd brought her own.