the-truth-about-parenting
Original: the-truth-about-parenting on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title banner: HOW I IMAGINED PARENTING:
Panel 1:
Child (in an astronaut costume, to a bearded man): Daddy, I wanna be an astronaut!
Panel 2:
Bearded father (tearful, heartfelt): You will be. One day, by God, you will be.
Title banner: WHAT IT'S ACTUALLY LIKE:
Panel 3:
Child (in an astronaut costume): Daddy, I wanna be an astronaut!
Panel 4:
Father (holding a crying baby, weary): Hey, did you know that astronauts ALWAYS go to sleep at EXACTLY 7PM?
Votey:
The father continues, exhausted, the text trailing off the edge of the panel:
And clean and eat vegetables and take baths and say please and share with their little...
Panel 1:
Child (in an astronaut costume, to a bearded man): Daddy, I wanna be an astronaut!
Panel 2:
Bearded father (tearful, heartfelt): You will be. One day, by God, you will be.
Title banner: WHAT IT'S ACTUALLY LIKE:
Panel 3:
Child (in an astronaut costume): Daddy, I wanna be an astronaut!
Panel 4:
Father (holding a crying baby, weary): Hey, did you know that astronauts ALWAYS go to sleep at EXACTLY 7PM?
Votey:
The father continues, exhausted, the text trailing off the edge of the panel:
And clean and eat vegetables and take baths and say please and share with their little...
Alt text
A four-panel SMBC comic contrasting imagined parenting with reality. Top half, banner: "How I imagined parenting." A child in a homemade astronaut costume says to a bearded dad, "Daddy, I wanna be an astronaut!" The dad, moved to tears, replies, "You will be. One day, by God, you will be." Bottom half, banner: "What it's actually like." The child again says, "Daddy, I wanna be an astronaut!" But now the haggard dad, cradling a crying baby, deflects the kid toward bedtime: "Hey, did you know that astronauts ALWAYS go to sleep at EXACTLY 7pm?" The votey (aftercomic) is a sparse line drawing of the worn-out dad still rattling off bedtime propaganda, the run-on list of chores he's attributing to astronauts spilling off the bottom edge of the panel: "And clean and eat vegetables and take baths and say please and share with their little..." The joke: parental idealism gets repurposed into exhausted manipulation to get kids to behave.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.