Babies Make Everything Better



""Couples may worry that new babies could stress out their relationship. But no -- babies keep families together. Although the couple might separate during the pregnancy or after the birth, fatherhood will appeal to a man so much that he'll soon return to the woman and his child. It happens in Nine Months. Why shouldn't it happen for you?""

- Bright Lights Film Journal

In a lot of fiction, babies make everything better just by turning up. Babies mend broken relationships, restore someone's faith in life, and stop wars. Even the Screaming Birth won't put onlookers (or the mother) off pondering the magnificence of life - even onlookers who are normally so easily squicked out that the messiness of childbirth should have rendered them unconscious. All angst is dissolved with their first cry of life, all the problems in their parents' worlds melt away with one glimpse into those innocent blue eyes, the world's problems are lost in the significance of their first dirty nappy...

Needless to say, the practicalities of having a baby are mostly glossed over, and even previously irresponsible parents will be instantly willing and able to step up and take responsibility for the newborn.

Compare The Baby Trap, which is when a character who believes in this trope attempts to invoke it without the knowledge and/or consent of their partner. See Babies Babies Everywhere for related tropes. Truth in Television for some—namely, couples who straighten their problems out before starting a family, and seemingly-unlikely mothers and fathers who take to parenthood like ducks to water. A character impervious to the cuteness of babies is frequently a Child-Hater. See also Children Raise You, where the situation is less idealistic (though with much the same outcome) and the caretaker is not the child's biological parent.

Needless to say, in real life babies are a huge, life-long responsibilities, and even if they do solve some problems, they come with plenty of complications of their own. They are not epiphany therapists and definitely not magicians. They won't make an abusive relationship any less so (in fact, they just provide a new target for abuse), nor will they end wars or alleviate poverty.

Polar opposite of Children Are a Waste.

Anime and Manga

 * Used with an extra dose of anvils in Vandread. An alien computer virus infects the entire ship when the crew attempts to open a Lost Technology data storage, rendering the ship defenseless as enemy forces approach. It also leaves our hero, his love interest and a woman in labor stuck in an elevator. Some of the crew patch the comm-system into the elevator so they can give advice to the kids trying to play midwife, and when the baby is born, its first cry echoes through the ship... causing the virus to instantly dissolve. It was actually a defense program to prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on the information in the data-storage, and the 'password' was a baby's first cry. The creator of the time capsule stated that any culture that still sees children born, greeting the world with a cry of sheer life, is worthy of being preserved.
 * Played pretty straight in episode 7 of Sailor Moon R (episode 53 overall), where the Cardian is sent in to attack babies and one of the mothers takes the brunt of an attack meant for her son. The baby, unfortunately has no one to take care of him, so Mamoru, being the good guy that he is, volunteers. Usagi decides to help and the two of them even hold hands when they dance for joy when the little baby begins to walk and talks for the first time. At the time, Mamoru had amnesia and didn't remember anything about loving Usagi. In fact, he clearly found her kind of strange and unpleasant. This one is slightly more excusable since they were just babysitting, and since they weren't sole caretakers of the little one long enough it didn't have time to stop being fun and become reality.
 * In Black Butler, Madam Red  At the end of it, she expects Ciel to sympathize with her because in her view any woman that doesn't want a child must be a shallow tart undeserving of any sympathy.
 * In Sakende Yaruze Shino and Misao think this when they are 17. After actually getting pregnant Misao seems to change her mind a little as she leaves Shino so that having a family will not get in the way of his career.
 * Played with in Fairy Tail. There are no signs of anyone having a kid anytime soon, but in a flashback bonus chapter they show how Natsu came to acquire Happy, which was by finding an egg in the forest that the cat(?) then hatched out of. Moment before Happy's hatching everyone was fighting, but the moment he appeared everyone stopped fighting and cheered up. For this reason, Natsu named the cat 'Happy'.
 * Played with as well in the Sword Fiend filler arc of Bleach, where Hisagi's Ax Crazy zanpakutou, Kazeshini, has continued to hunt his owner remorselessly even though Muramasa's control over him was excised. He uses guerilla tactics in a very clear effort to kill his owner (rather than wanting to fight him head-on), until he kills one of the Sword Fiends who tries to kill him. Said sword fiend had just killed a father with a newborn baby, who imprints on Kazeshini and quickly becomes his Morality Pet.
 * Badly subverted in Berserk. When Guts and Casca finally admitted their feelings to one another and consummated their relationship, Casca gets pregnant during this window of optimism and happiness (something that is very unsettling in the world of Berserk). And as you might have already guessed, it did not end well for Guts, Casca, or their unborn child after the dreadful Eclipse happened, resulting in Casca giving birth to the baby prematurely, with it being born deformed and evil. Guts was not happy when it was born.

Comic Books

 * Played utterly straight in Elf Quest. Even when the characters really didn't want a child (as is the case with Dewshine and Tyldak), the baby is still treated as a small miracle. Later on in the comic, Dewshine is seen absolutely beside herself with joy because her lifemate, Scouter, has made another girl pregnant. Several healers, including Leetah and Rain, have made it practically their life's work to increase the tribe's fertility. Leetah's sister Shenshen is one of her village's most respected members because she's a midwife. Lord Voll forces an entire tribe to bend to his will just so he can see the chief's children; later Winnowill, the Big Bad, uses one of the kids both as Human Shield against the tribe and as motivation for her human pets, who understood elves to be basically sterile. Nonna and Adar, two humans, lead lonely and meaningless lives because they're barren, and are only shown to be truly happy once they've adopted three young orphans. Krim is willing to sacrifice her own life during the war until she finds out she's pregnant. Tyleet adopts a human baby who gets abandoned by his parents. And so on and so forth. The in-story justification for this, at least for the elves, is that elves have long lives and extremely low fertility, so every birth is celebrated no matter how strange the circumstances. As a further touch, almost every elven birth is caused by Recognition, a magical way to ensure that the child is specially gifted as a consequence of that particular genetic union. Of course, none of this stuff explains why the trope is implied to the relatively primitive humans present in the setting.
 * An undercurrent in the general Fables storyline. When Snow White and Bigby's seven children are born, it's treated as a miracle amongst the Fables community. As revealed in Peter and Max, . The only other birth, Beast and Beauty's recent newborn, is celebrated while shrouded in omens (Frau Totenkinder knits a baby outfit with six limbs). Abortion is forbidden,

Film

 * Lampshaded in Rachel Getting Married. The family is having a heated argument which Rachel ends by telling everyone that she's pregnant, and attention instantly focuses on the baby and nobody is fighting anymore. Kim says it's "not fair" for her to pull out the baby card as if that makes everything better.
 * This is how Georgy Girl ends. It's kind of a head-scratcher.
 * Knocked Up transforms a lazy slob into hubby material via his partner's pregnancy - despite the fact that he got her pregnant after a one-night stand. It does manage to execute this trope fairly well in that neither the pregnancy nor birth of his child make Ben's relationship with Alison any better: he has to work really hard to get the happy ending.
 * It's also worth noting that his actual character does not change, he more or less wants the kid and the relationship from the beginning and is willing to work for both. It just takes him a while to figure out how to actually achieve this and get the other parent on board.
 * Nine Months is enough time to make Hugh Grant realize that he really wants to be a daddy, despite having no previous inclinations in that direction. Playing the baby card wasn't exactly an unqualified success though, since some viewers were more concerned about Grant's elderly cat than the baby.
 * In What a Girl Wants, Libby says the only comfort she had after being sent away was learning she was pregnant with Daphne. Also, Daphne's existence is what causes Libby to reunite with the father, Henry, and his choosing her over Manipulative Bitch Glynnis.
 * Heavily implied in Away We Go. The movie ends before the birth but the basically-unrelated-to-the-rest-of-the-movie ending seems to be heading that way.
 * Played straight, then subverted in King Vidor's silent classic The Crowd. After having a string of marital problems culminating in an argument where Mary threatens to leave her husband John, he tells her to go ahead and do it. Mary then tells him that she's pregnant, and John suddenly apologizes and promises to be a better husband and a good father. Subverted in that a few years later John's lapsed back into his old habits and proves to be completely useless at helping to raise the children. And things only get worse when
 * Pretty much the point of the end of the movie Parenthood.
 * Also the point of Three Men and a Baby.
 * As soon as her baby is placed in Jenna's arms in Waitress, she finds the strength to tell off her abusive husband. This may be a bit of early-onset Mama Bear. Although the trope is played with, if not subverted, in that the baby normally 'fixes' the relationship by bringing the couple together and easing their tensions; here, the relationship is fixed when the woman tells her abusive husband it's over and she wants a divorce.
 * Horrifically averted in Eraserhead.
 * This belief makes up the main plot of Raising Arizona. The main couple feel that their relationship is incomplete without a child, but the woman is sterile and the man in an ex-con, which ruins their chances of adopting a baby. They decide that they will steal a baby instead. They decide to return the baby after learning that it won't magically make them more mature and well-adjusted people, but they decide to work through their problems and stay together anyway, and it's suggested that they eventually get their act together and have Babies Ever After.

Folklore

 * Old example: In the fairytale "Pride Punished", a husband's brutal campaign of humiliation against his "proud" wife (she *gasp* called him out on his table manners) is only called off when she bears him twin sons.

Literature

 * In Breaking Dawn, Bella herself admits that she doesn't like babies but two seconds after discovering she is pregnant decides that she wants nothing more than to have Edward's perfect, sparkly, gorgeous baby. Bella and Edward have an unrealistically good marriage (all two days of it) before the pregnancy is discovered and the baby grows up so fast that there is no period of dirty diapers, crying, or spoon feeding. It also plays this straight in the following ways and cements Nessie as Fixer Sue:
 * Nessie instantly patches the relationship between Bella and her new sister-in-law Rosalie, who spent the last three books despising the girl and is pretty much the only Cullen vampire who didn't adore Bella from day one.
 * Nessie is also the perfect soul mate of Bella's own lovelorn suitor Jacob, who is immediately smitten with the child and totally drops whatever feelings he may have had for Bella. His relationship with Edward is thus completely mended, with Edward even calling Jacob his "son" and giving his blessing.
 * Nessie is also also the bridge between the vampires and the wolf pack, since Jacob imprints on her. Therefore, the two clans become allies, even more so than when Jacob was pining for Bella since he actually imprints on Nessie and the shapeshifters are forbidden from harming any shapeshifter's imprint.
 * Nessie is also also also the catalyst for Bella becoming a vampire, which gives Bella the ability to use her new-and-improved mental shield to protect everyone on her side of the fight with the Volturi, so the Volturi cannot harm them. Thus the battle for which vampires have been gathering from all over the globe ends in a polite discussion before everyone goes home.
 * Invoked in Homesick: My Own Story where an eleven-year-old girl thinks that adopting a baby would improve her parents' marriage and keep her adopted older brother from feeling left out.
 * Invoked in The Thorn Birds, when Meggie believes that children will salvage her relationship with Luke and bring him home from the cane fields, and then averted hard when it does not go according to plan at all. And it doesn't go any better with her second child,  Babies pretty much make everything much, much worse.
 * Invoked and then averted in Gone with the Wind. When Scarlett learns she's pregnant again, for the first time ever, she's happy about it and sees the pregnancy as a chance for her and Rhett to reconcile. Similarly, despite numerous warnings not to have another child or it could cost her her life, Melanie gets pregnant anyway, believing she'll prove all her doctors wrong..
 * Averted on a global scale by one of the stories in Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, which tells how a potential war (over the romance between members of the ruling families) was won bloodlessly - by filling the enemy planet with babies, fired out a of a network of baby cannon. The planet capitulated due to the stresses of a world full of babies. Although as this left the couple able to get together, maybe it's played straight as well...
 * Torn apart in Such A Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess. A pedophile is let out of jail on a reduced sentence and suggests to his wife they have another child. She agrees, not because she wants a baby, but because he does, and she thinks it would be a wonderful symbol of their family starting over. Their fifteen-year-old daughter Meredith, one of her father's victims, is understandably horrified. Her narration later also references how foolish, but common, this idea is for 'girls like her.' (See Quotes page, it's long.)
 * In Captain French, or the Quest for Paradise by Mikhail Akhmanov and Christopher Nicholas Gilmore, the titular space trader gets a new wife (he literally buys her from a convent on a religious world), and they fall in love fairly quickly. After months of traveling (subjective time) the stars and seeing many planets, she decides that she wants to give him a baby, something only one other woman has done before - his very first wife on Earth 20,000 years ago. Despite his arguments (perfectly valid) about the problems of having a fetus develop in a low-gravity environment and the lonely life he or she would have aboard the ship, she still wants a baby. Finally, she comes up with a solution - French drops her off on a planet where native women have prophetic powers that allow them to choose their soulmate (this would keep French's wife from cheating), and she has a son that will grow up and get married on the planet. She would then return to the ship decades later from her timeframe but only months for French. The problem ignored by the author is that this means that French himself never even meets his son until decades later, so she's not really giving him a child.
 * French mentions that there are whole groups of women he likes to call the Frenetic Mothers. Their only goal in life is to bear as many babies as possible. Who the fathers are doesn't really matter. They are the driving force behind human colonization of the galaxy, urging planetary governments to build colony ships whenever population density warrants Population Control.

Live Action TV

 * Scrubs has both used and subverted this; a Christmas episode sees an unplanned pregnancy and labor restore the cast's faith in life (and in Turk's case, God), Dr. Cox and Jordan bond (albeit rather cynically) over the birth of a friend's child, and formerly child-indifferent Elliot becomes a cooing puddle of mush - but in another episode, J.D. wonders who the hell managed to romanticize childbirth. Later episodes address the fact that Carla, a responsible woman who really wanted to be a mum, still had to deal with postpartum depression.
 * One story arc involved J.D. getting Sacred Heart's urologist Dr. Kim Briggs pregnant, after having only dated for a very short time (the pregnancy was also caused by non-penetrative sex). Kim accepts a job in Washington, tells J.D. she miscarried, and the two end the relationship. It's later revealed that she lied. Kim and J.D. reunite for a while, but ultimately they end the relationship, remaining friends for the sake of their son Sam.
 * Crichton and Aeryn's baby certainly gives Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars a warm and fluffy ending, as well as bringing Aeryn's "humanity" to fruition. "All of a sudden, three's not such a scary number."
 * Played straight and subverted on Heroes with Matt Parkman. Straight example: he leaves his wife, Janice, for a multitude of reasons, mostly because she's been cheating on him, and he thinks that the child she's about to bear isn't his. Subversion: his vision of his marriage to Daphne in the future involved them having a kid together.
 * Played straight and subverted in Sons of Anarchy. Wendy is trying to make things work with Jax because of Abel but it's hard going. Since she wasn't seen in the opening episode of the second season things may not have worked out. Also care of Abel seems to largely be falling to Gemma.
 * In season three, when Tera gets pregnant she decides to have an abortion since it is going to complicate an already messy situation with Jax. Having the baby in Charming also means that she will be more or less locked into staying involved with the Sons. She ends up not having the abortion for other reasons and when Jax finds out he is overjoyed. To be fair neither really expects for things to get better because of the baby.
 * Word of God state that the financial difficulties of having an extremely sick baby (Jax's older brother) that caused John Teller to start dealing in illegal firearms and resulted in corrupting the club into what it is in the present. When the baby still died, John became depressed and alienated from Gemma and ultimately ended up dead.
 * Det. Vera tries to invoke this trope on Cold Case by attempting to adopt a baby to fix his rocky marriage. It doesn't work: the adoption is denied and he and his wife eventually divorce.
 * Subverted with cruel elegance on Mad Men. Having exiled Don to the couch earlier on, Betty Draper finds out that she's pregnant again at the end of the second season. Their marriage does seem to improve for a while, but eventually things fall apart after (1) Betty starts falling for another man (Henry Francis, an adviser to Governor Nelson Rockefeller) and (2) she finds out who Don really is. Fourteen months after Betty finds out about her pregnancy, she's flying out to Nevada (with Henry and baby Eugene) to file for divorce.
 * Beautifully subverted on Outrageous Fortune. Loretta, who is twisted and spiteful of just about everything before getting pregnant, gives birth (in an equally beautiful subversion of another aspect of this trope, where Van is the only one with her and visibly freaked out but still helping her), names the baby, and breastfeeds at least once and doesn't change a bit. She does undergo a radical change in the following season but, if anything, she only gets more evil, and there are other obvious reasons. Specifically,.
 * Variation on How I Met Your Mother. Extreme bachelor Barney hates the idea that his brother and wingman is getting married, right up until he finds out he's going to be an uncle.
 * Subverted on Dollhouse, in Epitaph Two, Sierra is raising her son by Victor, and Victor is off being a Tech-head for a cause. The baby did not make anything better. The one bright spot is that they might have been reunited in the end after Victor/Tony throws away the tech to be a father to T and, presumably, a husband to Sierra/Priya.
 * Good Luck Charlie. 'Nuff said.
 * Averted on The Wire. Kima's girlfriend wants a baby, and Kima reluctantly goes along with it. The baby ends up making their relationship significantly worse, and they eventually break up because of it.
 * Sort of invoked in the first episode of Battlestar Galactica, where a single birth shows there is still hope for mankind. Takes a darker turn in Season 2 when the religious lobby (led by the Quorum member from Gemenon) and genuine concerns about population cause President Roslin (after a lot of wrestling with herself, as she seems to have been liberal on the subject before the Destruction of the Colonies) outlaws abortion, a controversial decision that cost her some of her political popularity.
 * Degrassi the Next Generation usually inverts this: Manny and Liberty's pregnancies made everything worse. Especially Liberty's. Mia doesn't have any problem having a daughter, though, to the point of Mary Sue territory. (Although, to be fair, both Mia and Spike from teh original Degrassi High series have pretty supportive families). And Emma thought she was pregnant, but Alternate Character Interpretation has it that she faked the pregnancy so Sean would stay with her.
 * Deconstructed in an episode of Flashpoint, where a couple trying to get pregnant only increased their frustrations on each other, leading the husband to sleep with another woman . And his adultery led to   Once his already suspicious wife found out, things only got worse.
 * This trope was implicit in the resolution of one episode of Thirty Rock. Liz plots to adopt the baby of a woman she finds working the night shift in a bakery, and works to gain the mother's trust by giving her a job on TGS to "gauge the interests of young people." Pete calls her out on this manipulative behavior, saying that he freaked out several times whenever his wife got pregnant, but always came back. When the boyfriend does end up coming back, Pete's position is vindicated. From the audience perspective, though, whether either of these two are fit to be parents is a legitimate question considering how naive and overly romantic they are.
 * This is subverted on an episode of CSI: Miami. The carjacking and near-fatal beating of a pregnant woman was orchestrated by her husband who believed that Babies Make Everything Worse. He wanted to preserve his 'perfect marriage' by causing a miscarriage, however he used a Psycho for Hire and his wife almost died.
 * In Sixteen and Pregnant, this trope is usually proven false, with pregnancies causing breakups and dropping out of school.
 * Averted in Breaking Bad. Skylar is pregnant when Walt is diagnosed with cancer, and his drug operation is motivated by the hope of providing a future for his family. When his child is born, Skylar wants to separate as she has noticed Walt's behavior and figured out what he has been doing.
 * On the other hand, Breaking Bad has never missed an opportunity to give a Family-Unfriendly Aesop, so the aversion of this trope is coupled with
 * Played with, but ultimately averted in The Office, where Michael's discovery of Jan's pregnancy brings him back together with her after their messy, domestic-violence induced breakup. Ultimately averted in that the baby was not Michael's (it was an artificial insemination from a donor), and Jan told Michael that from the beginning, but it took until the baby was born for that fact to really sink in for him, then he stopped associating with Jan permanently.
 * Played straight in The X-Files episode The Postmodern Prometheus, even though the babies are...monstrous...
 * Subverted in Six Feet Under: Nate and Lisa's relationship is at least as rocky after having a baby as before, and Nate actually breaks up with Brenda after getting her all knocked up.
 * A version on One Life to Live, when a woman suggests to her husband that they adopt another baby in addition to the child they adopted several years ago. Although she initially tries to play her idea as simply feeling ready for another child, the husband forces her to confront her real motives—their marriage is in trouble and she thinks another baby will solve their problems.
 * Done in The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which is a little jarring seeing as how the purpose of the show was to show that teenage pregnancy is BAD.
 * The Maury show uses the inversion of this trope pretty frequently. There will be episodes where a bunch of teenage girls act like they can become a great mother and how they have what it takes to raise a baby. Cue a reality check when the girls are sent somewhere to raise a baby for a few days and come to the realization on how hard babies make everything in life.

Music

 * Strongly averted by After Forever's concept album, Invisible Circles. Two lovers argue at the beginning, the man focused on his career while the woman believes a child can mend the growing rift between them. It doesn't, and their daughter grows up to be neglected by her mother, abused by her father, and only finding solace in cyberspace.

Newspaper Comics

 * In For Better or For Worse, Anthony wanted a child, despite his wife being unsure. Sometime after the birth, she leaves him.
 * Occurs in Mark Trail, when a guy who hits his wife is explained as being under stress at work, and once they adopt everything will be fine. The Comics Curmudgeon was horrified.
 * Subverted in Doonesbury; though the birth of their daughter reunited Mike and J.J., their relationship was as unstable as ever and eventually ended in divorce.
 * And it looks like Delilah and Laurence's marriage is heading straight long into this trope in Mary Worth. This isn't the first time the comic has pulled this plot.

Theater

 * Viciously subverted in A Streetcar Named Desire - Stella's first and only stand against her animalistic husband is interrupted by her going into labor, reinforcing her dependence on Stanley. The baby makes nothing better - he's more likely to be another victim of Stanley's idea of domestic bliss.
 * In the movie, after Stanley sends Stella's sister, Blanche, to an insane asylum (after he raped her), Stella eventually snaps and calls him out. The baby still didn't make anything better.
 * Defied in Saturday's Children. Bobby, trapped in a unhappy marriage of her own making, is told by her married sister to have a baby because that's what women do to keep their husbands. Bobby talks it over with her father, who tries to advise her against it. Ultimately, she broaches the idea to her husband, then angrily breaks down and says she won't trap him that way.
 * In William Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, Paula brings the newborn princess out of the prison where her mother is, in attempt to reason with the king. The king's heart is not softened. In fact, he orders the baby abandoned in another kingdom.
 * Referenced in one dancer's monologue in the song "At The Ballet" from A Chorus Line: "I was born to save their marriage. But when my father came to pick me and my mother up at the hospital, he said: 'Well, I thought this was going to help, but I guess not.' A few months later he left and never came back."
 * Toyed with, but dismissed in Cabaret. After Sally, she reminds Cliff that they aren't really in love and even if they tried to be good parents, their relationship would fall apart. Cliff insists that he'd never leave her if there was a baby involved, and she retorts, "To hold us together, you mean. A lot of pressure for an infant, don't you think?"

Web Animation

 * One episode of Brain POP shows a grown-up, married Tim and Rita with two children.
 * It was the pregnancy one.

Web Comics

 * Eight Bit Theater has seemed to reached a point where the kidnapping of babies - and the murder of their mothers - has become downright hilarious.
 * The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob: Jean expresses her mixed feelings about suddenly being Molly's mother here.
 * Scathingly parodied with the "Woman With The Beautiful Baby" in Girly. All she does is talk nonstop about her (hideous) baby and how all women should have their own. Josh later takes the concept Up to Eleven with the Baby Sidekick Dickweed, who creates millions of evil babies to use as projectiles from the skin all over her body. (Including her mouth, arms and...er, lower down.
 * Axe Cop. Oh, lord, where to begin...the seven-year-old author went through a phase where he thought babies were amazing, and threw them into the comic everywhere, from the Bobblehead Baby Beach Battle episode to the flashback to Axe Cop's childhood, when his mom fed him nothing but candy canes and babies—and yes, he's the good guy. There's even a recurring character, Uni-Baby, who has a wish-granting unicorn horn, as well as a tank-stroller that fires her poop as a cannon.

Western Animation
"Homer: [gathers the kids into his lap] You know, son, the day you were born, I received the greatest gift a man could have. As the years went by, your mother and I were blessed twice more. And not a day goes by that we don't thank God for all three of you. Marge: Homer, I'm not pregnant! Homer: [gets up, the kids on his lap falling to the floor] Yeah! Whoa! Excellent, Marge! Marge: Yes! [they high five]"
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender did the "childbirth reinforces belief in life" thing, snapping Aang out of his gloom by having him see a baby born.
 * Played straight on The Simpsons. Marge's third pregnancy ruined Homer's plans for a dream job and future happiness, forcing him to take up work at the power plant again, and he made it no secret that he was miserable about the whole thing. What brought him out of his depression? Maggie's birth. Proving that Tropes Are Not Bad, this manages to be a doozy of a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming! The episode kicks off with Bart and Lisa noticing that Maggie has no baby pictures. At the end, Homer explains that they are where he needs them the most. Cut to his station at the power plant, decorated with pictures of Maggie. Mr. Burns put up a plaque reading "Don't Forget - You're Here Forever" when Homer was re-hired. The photos block out bits and pieces of this sign so it reads, "Do It For Her."
 * It was doubly subverted in another episode where Marge was afraid she was pregnant again. The kids react with delight upon learning they'll have another brother or sister; Homer responds by telling them a new baby isn't all fun and games and tells them the story of Bart's conception and the resulting pregnancy and birth. In the end, Bart's birth made everything better: Homer gets a job, saves his marriage, and tells off his sisters-in-law. Then it was triply subverted when Marge returned from the Doctor.


 * This trope was also averted in a portion of an episode that depicted how Homer lost his hair: whenever Marge announced that she was pregnant, Homer would rip out a handful of hair from his scalp and run upstairs screaming.
 * Horribly, horribly averted in Invader Zim. PLAGUE OF BABIES.
 * The Fairly Odd Parents: Once Poof was born, this trope started appearing. His very laughter causes good things to happen, and in "Wishology" . Poof is also literally magical and the first of his kind born in thousands of years.
 * Completely averted in American Dad. Stan and Francine meet a young, wild couple who just want to have fun partying and doing extreme activities, stating that they don't want kids for years. When Stan and Francine can't keep up with their lifestyle, they mess with their birth control, which causes the wife to become pregnant. This ends with the couple divorcing and breaking things off with Stan and Francine.

Fanfiction

 * Tons and tons of fanfiction.
 * A well done version of this trope shows up in The Second Try, a Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic. The couple, didn't want to initially be parents due to their own parental issues and had to work through those first, as well as make lots of preparations for the birth. And even after birth, they still had to work through being parents without any help, made mistakes, got messy and had problems. Ultimately, though, their child turned out be a wonderful and fulfilling addition to their lives.

Other

 * Subverted in The Onion, of course- Autistic Child Ruins Marriage He Was Born To Save

Real Life

 * Scarleteen.com, a teen sex education website, frequently gets emails from young women saying they want to get pregnant. Their reasons fall depressingly frequently into this trope - "I'm lonely," "my boyfriend is distant," "I feel like it would give my life purpose."
 * It Gets Worse when they actually go through with getting pregnant and having a kid, only to find that having a baby didn't fix the problems they expected would be fixed and actually ends up making some problems worse. (if a relationship is already strained, having a baby will just add more stress and make things worse, not bring the couple together) Not to mention that having a baby changes a person's life, teenage mothers often find they have to give up much of their social life and other teen/young adult activities, leading to regret on "missing out" on their teenage years.
 * Nick Hornby said that he and his wife had a child as a celebration of having gotten over difficulties in their marriage. With the additional stress of having a very autistic child 'the sticking plasters over the wounds peeled off, showing that the scars had not healed but had festered.'
 * David Simon's nonfiction book about Baltimore's open-air drug markets, The Corner, features a particularly bad ending to this sort of thing: Young man who 'made it out' (via college/ROTC) makes a neighborhood girl pregnant, decides to "do the right thing" (even though everyone- including the mother- tells him he doesn't have to). Both become addicted to drugs, man ends up specializing in stealing copper piping from under occupied houses to sell as "scrap" for drug money. Both man and woman blame the other for their predicament.
 * There is a field of clinical psychology known as family therapy. It's pretty much what it sounds like: members of a family are treated individually and as a group in order to resolve their issues. Many of the families that end up there seem to hold the belief that having children will help solve their relationship issues, when having children in a strained relationship will often just exacerbate problems. So, to put it simply: No, Babies will NOT make everything better.*
 * As noted above, this isn't always true in real life. Imagine an annoying child, but smaller and weaker, that constantly cries, screams, and wets the crib. This is why some people consider abortion and abandonment to actually be the only way to escape. It's very complicated.