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Babies Make Everything Better: Difference between revisions
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* 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 {{spoiler|marries a man who she does not love because her sister married her beloved. However, when she becomes pregnant, she tells us in a inner monologue that she begins to feel she can really love her husband. When she loses the child in a accident and goes crazy because another woman had an abortion, she begins killing all those expecting mothers who wish to be rid of their children.}} 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 [[Child-Hater|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 [[World Half Empty|the world of Berserk]]). And as you might have already guessed, it did not end well for [[Life or Limb Decision|Guts,]] [[Go Mad From the Revelation|Casca,]] or their unborn child after the dreadful Eclipse happened, resulting in Casca giving birth to the baby prematurely, with it being born deformed [[Fetus Terrible|and evil.]] [[That Thing Is Not My Child|Guts was not happy]] [[Offing the Offspring|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'', {{spoiler|the wicked [[The Pied Piper of Hamelin|Max Piper]] made all Earth-based Fables sterile during his revenge on his brother in the 1920's}}. 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, {{spoiler|though Frau Totenkinder owns a chain of abortion clinics to keep her magic powers fully fueled.}}
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** 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, {{spoiler|who is the son of Meggie and Father Ralph. Not only does he not make everything better, he unwittingly spites Meggie by, instead of being a human piece of Ralph to carry on, he opts to become a priest, the thing that most angers Meggie about Ralph in the first place. And then he dies, leaving her with Luke's daughter, whom she has treated as horribly as she was treated by her mother.}} 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. {{spoiler|Instead, [[It Gets Worse]] in both cases--Scarlett miscarries after another argument with Rhett and the resulting strain contributes to the end of the marriage, Melanie miscarries and ''dies''}}.
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** 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 to the Couch|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 [[Dead Person Impersonation|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, {{spoiler|the influence of her grandmother, Rita, and her desire to go after the then-boy now-old man Rita had an affair with}}.
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* Deconstructed in an episode of ''[[Flashpoint (TV series)|Flashpoint]]'', where a couple trying to get pregnant only increased their frustrations on each other, leading the husband to sleep with another woman {{spoiler|though he realized his mistake and remained loyal to his wife}}. And his adultery led to {{spoiler|the woman he slept with to become pregnant.}} Once his already suspicious wife found out, things only [[It Got Worse|got worse.]]
* This trope was implicit in the resolution of one episode of ''[[30 Rock|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 ''[[16 and Pregnant|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.
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== 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 Got Worse|It doesn't]], and their daughter grows up to be neglected by her mother, abused by her father, and only finding solace in cyberspace.
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* 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 {{spoiler|goes through with an abortion}}, 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 [[Shipper on Deck|a grown-up, married Tim and Rita]] with two children.
** It was the pregnancy one.
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[8-Bit Theater
* ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]:'' Jean expresses her mixed feelings about suddenly being Molly's mother [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20071117.html here.]
* Scathingly parodied with the "Woman With The [[Informed Attribute|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 <s> Sidekick</s> Dickweed, who [[Doppleganger Attack|creates millions of]] [[Fetus Terrible|evil babies]] [[Refuge in Audacity|to use as projectiles]] [[Nausea Fuel|from the skin all over her body]]. (Including her mouth, arms and...er, ''lower down''.
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'''Homer:''' [gets up, the kids on his lap falling to the floor] Yeah! Whoa! Excellent, Marge!
'''Marge:''' Yes! [they high five] }}
** This trope was also averted in a portion of an episode that [[Retcon|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.
* [[Eldritch Abomination|Horribly, horribly]] averted in ''[[Invader Zim]]''. [[Nightmare Fuel|PLAGUE OF BABIES.]]
* ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'': Once [[Cousin Oliver|Poof]] was born, this trope started appearing. His very laughter causes good things to happen, and in "Wishology" {{spoiler|his smile turns The Darkness into The Kindness}}. 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.
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