When my kids were born, I had better parental leave benefits than my wife. Still, I had zero intention to stay home with the kids; I hadn't even considered it. But my wife sucked at taking care of babies (she was emotionally overwhelmed by the crying) so at the 4-month point I stayed home with the kids and she went back to work. It took a couple of weeks to figure out what I was doing, but once I got the hang of it, I LOVED it and it was easy. Me and the baby went all over, played all day. My wife would come home from work and the kid would be covered in mud from playing outside with me. If I hadn't done this, I would have ended up simply deferring to my wife on a lot of parenting issues since "she's the mother", the way a lot of men behave in families. I liked the experience so much that I ended up staying off work with each baby until they were 18-months old.
I did that with both of my daughters and our connection is strong because of it.