Parents for a Day

The canonical equivalent of a Kid Fic, in a way. In this trope, a baby or something like it is raised, who leaves by the end of the episode. There are two types:


 * 1) One character raises a child for an episode. This allows for a little Character Development in letting a character show his or her softer side. The character will often grow attached to the child. It's different from type 2 in that there's less focus on the interactions between the characters, and more on the character and the child.
 * 2) Two or more characters raise a child for an episode, letting it go after it matures by the end. It's a great way to add some Ship Tease, and quite often, some Ho Yay, as there's often the implications of a couple. Note that this isn't always the case, however; there's times when characters do this for different motives. Does This Remind You of Anything? is sometimes present, too.

Can overlap with A Day in the Limelight and Has Two Mommies. When it's only a simulation of a child it's called Egg Sitting. Compare Children Raise You. See also Is That Cute Kid Yours?

Anime and Manga

 * In Maison Ikkoku, Godai and Kyoko are forced to look after the abandoned children of a runaway waitress (sort of, it's very complicated). This shows that both have good parenting skills. Shipteasing left and right.
 * In Perfect Girl Evolution, Ranmaru Mori, being a ladies' man that tends to have affairs with married women, has this happen to him in one of the stories. One of the women he had an affair with left a little girl with him, telling him that she's his daughter. He takes care of her for a while and gets very attached to her, until the mother comes back and it's revealed that the daughter isn't his. Unfortunately for the little girl, her father is much uglier than Ranmaru, and she cries while saying she wants her "pretty daddy" instead.
 * In the Tenchi Muyo! episode "Hello Baby!", the girls have to take care of a baby whose mother is ill. Ryoko, Mihoshi and Ayeka have no idea of how to care for the infant until Washu comes to the rescue.
 * In Bleach episode 260, Kazeshini (Shuuhei's Zampaktou) finds a baby whose dying father asks to be taken care of. After growing attached to the kid, Kazeshini decides to leave him with a woman who wanted to take care of him. When they're attacked by a sword fiend (which, by the way, was the one who killed the baby's father), Kazeshini protects the kid with his own body, understanding why Shuuhei accepts to risk his life for others. After killing the sword fiend, he asks the woman to raise the kid, before leaving to fight his final battle with Shuuhei.
 * In Sailor Moon Serena/Usagi and Darien/Mamoru have to care for a baby while it's mother recovers from being attacked by the Monster of the Week. Actually, Darien volunteers and Serena decides try to help him, mostly to try and get close to him, since this occours early in the first arc of the R season, where he has lost his memory.
 * In Shugo Chara,  help look after a little boy for a few hours after he got lost.

Live Action TV

 * Clark and Lana do this on Smallville, with the odd twist that it only lasts a day because the child in question has a kryptonite-induced mutation that causes him to age by several years every few hours.
 * The Birds of Prey had to do the exact same thing in "Three Birds and a Baby". The child's Rapid Aging caused him to die at the end of the episode in a surprising Tear Jerker.
 * In Charmed the sisters need to take care of a child not their own for a day several times throughout the series. It does serve as both a foreshadowing and practice for when they get their own child. Since they are basically 3 moms, there is no Ship Tease, Ho Yay, or implications of a couple. Just a foreshadowing/practice.
 * In Battlestar Galactica, Leoben leaves Starbuck with a little girl the cylon had kidnapped, telling Starbuck that she's the pilot's daughter. Of course, he's lying, but she doesn't find that out until after she's bonded with the child.
 * In the MacGyver episode "Rock the Cradle," Jack Dalton's ex-girlfriend, on the run from criminals, leaves her son "Jack Jr." in Jack's airplane hangar, with a note asking Jack to take care of him. Jack and MacGyver have to look after the kid while trying to track down Mama.
 * Done on Remington Steele.
 * In the Bones episode "The Baby in the Bough" Booth and Brennan take care of a victim's son. While Bones is rather Maternally Challenged and initially unwilling, she becomes attached by the end.
 * For a few episodes during Heroes Volume 4, Hiro and Ando have to take care of Matt Parkman's son.
 * The Jeeves and Wooster episode "Return to New York" (the part based on the story "Fixing It For Freddie") has Bertie and Jeeves looking after a toddler that Bertie "temporarily kidnapped" as part of his scheme to bring a couple back together.
 * Mr. Monk and the Kid: Monk bonds with a boy involved in the case he's investigating, and starts wanting to adopt him. Eventually, he decides that he can't take care of the boy, because.
 * This happens to Olivia Benson a couple times on Law and Order Special Victims Unit. One time she takes in an emotionally disturbed little girl who sets her apartment on fire in an attempt to ensure that Olivia will never leave her. In the Season 12 episode "Trophy", Olivia is suddenly given custody of the grandson of one of their rape victims. Several episodes later, however, his drug-addicted mother turns up again and has the boy taken from Olivia and custody transferred to his grandparents.

Western Animation

 * An episode of SpongeBob SquarePants had this happen to Spongebob and Patrick with a clam. Hilarity (and Ho Yay) Ensued.
 * Scratch and Grounder create a robot with spare parts, then raise it, in an episode filled with Ship Tease.
 * In an episode of Hey Arnold!, Arnold and Helga have to raise an egg together. There's already enough UST, so hijinks naturally ensue.
 * In Metalocalypse, the band members briefly take care of a foster child, though they treat him like an animal.
 * This will probably date me a bit, but I remember an episode of Winnie the Pooh which featured Rabbit stumbling across an orphaned bluebird and raising it himself. Of course, she flew away by the end of the episode, after Rabbit had softened from his usual persona.
 * That bird has appeared quite a bit since then, making an encore appearance in a later episode and is one of the recurring characters in The Book of Pooh. Her name's Kessie, by the way.
 * Family Guy had the episode where Peter raises a baby chick.
 * Pinky and The Brain had an episode where Brain attempted to clone himself, and some of Pinky's DNA got mixed in. Cue Pinky and Brain acting like a bickering couple while they try to raise the clone.
 * The episode "Whatever Happened to Baby Brain?" also had Pinky posing as the mother while Brain pretends to be a Deliberately Cute Girl in order to become a child star and raise money for his unstated world domination plot. Needless to say, Pinky took "her" own role too well.
 * The Type 2 version is present in the Danny Phantom episode "Life Lessons", where Danny and Valerie have to be fake parents to a flour sack for a class project. This episode hints at a relationship between them that occurs a couple more episodes later in the series. Also, Sam and Tucker are fake parents of another flour sack, possibly to mock shippers.