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The second Dumbing of Age Patreon bonus strip for August is about Amber and Dina! All patrons can go check it out.
Also, you can upgrade your pledge to see tomorrow’s strip today!
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GAH
…there was, like, a WEEK I wore the “I want to poop out a kid” hat, before actually being around one for an afternoon with that “what the fuck do I do with this thing, I don’t want to break it” vibe pulverizing the last ticks of my biological clock
“oh it’s different when it’s YOURS” yeah, bc either the making it will literally kill me or I’m under fire bc I will 100% not lying be one of THOSE parents who forgets it in the carNO THANKS please don’t make me that person I will gladly leave it to the professionals
(kids are loads cooler once they learn where to poop and can maybe not do it on me)
Yeah, I’m glad I’ve never had kids, and at this late stage it’s 99.99999 percent likely I won’t.
You know, having had two kids, I can say that the “it’s different when it’s yours” thing is actually true.
What they don’t tell you is that happens because it is an insane trial by fire for the first month when, after a couple days, the hospital says “goodbye and good luck” and you have to take your kid home and just figure everything the fuck out on your own. It’s INSANELY TERRIFYING, but if you survive that first month, you’ve basically got PTSD with “where’s my kid” instead of flashbacks.
Like, literally today, I was dropping my wife and two-year-old off at a store, and my brain, for no fucking reason, conjured an extremely vivid image of my child (who my wife was carrying) running into the very nearby traffic and getting graphically killed. Because that’s what my brain fucking does now that I’m a parent. Just at fucking random.
So yeah… it is different when it’s your own kid. **haunted eyes**
See, I never want to experience that.
Ah yes, the intrusive thoughts that come with parenthood. I’ve driven myself to tears on more than one occasion with them.
Oh, my brain already does that and I don’t have kids or anything like that yet.
We had a home birth, but it’s sort of the same thing. At some point the midwife leaves, and your friends have all gone home, and there you are. Left all alone with a brand new human being. A brand new terrifying experience, and he’s so little and fragile and breakable and if we screw up he’ll DIE and we don’t know what we’re doing so we’re probably going to screw up…
And then it all works out fine.
We went through that too. Eventually you figure out that if kids were fragile, the whole human race would have died out thousands of years ago.
Once you figure out YOU’RE not gonna kill the kid and you block out all the relatives who tell you “If you do that you’re gonna kill the kid” it gets a lot easier.
Little kids are this weird combination of fragile and indestructible.
Yup, that was my wife, before kids she was a nurse in a pediatric ward. Her primary saying was: “kids bounce”.
I hear it’s better in Sweden. 🙁
Can attest. I used to sleep just fine. First kid was born, and all of a sudden my sleep is sprinkled with vivid nightmares of said kid falling down the stairs, pushing open the back door, even just crawling across the bed and falling off. My wife now has the phrase “go back to sleep dear, it’s just a dream” on auto-spout whenever I disturb the bejeebers out of her sleep by frantically grabbing her feet thinking it’s the baby…even though now our youngest is now six. :/
Other than that, fatherhood has been pretty awesome, though, so… 🙂
You sound like the type who should adopt a 6+-year-old, instead. Skip over the most physically taxing phase.
I’m no parent but I can say from observation that when your kid (in this case, me) is bleeding profusely from the head and having to wait like an hour for attention in the ER and wailing their head off, that it doesn’t matter what age the kid is.
Even if they’re fucking fine and it just looks like a lot of blood (it wasn’t), you’re still trying to blame yourself for it and simultaneously try to work out how you’re going to pay the hospital bill.
That last part might just be an America thing though, I dunno.
I think my point got lost in the storytelling but it was basically that physically-taxing includes emotional taxes as well, that shit wears on your patience for drama and your psyche as well, and stuff that keeps you up at night eventually takes a physical toll.
That last part is, I’m afraid, basically an America thing. Nobody in, say, France would be thinking about that.
Or Denmark.
Or Canada.
Or the UK or the Netherlands. Or, y’know, pretty much any developed country that didn’t have kittens over AHHHH COMMUNISTS!!!!!!111!!! and understood that universal healthcare means your country won’t be shitty and horrific for everyone but the richest of the rich if they or any family member happens to get sick or has an accident.
I don’t think that’s a sound solution.
It means a) you suddenly have a six-year-old that you haven’t had 6 years to get to know and understand. You haven’t yet had a chance to learn all the parenting skills most parents have leveled up to by age 6.
b) the child has had 6 years. And if it’s up for adoption, that is for a reason. In only 6 years, it went through some or all of the following: a huge loss of its family, foster care, childhood abuse, breaches of trust by being handed around through different guardians, bad memories, unhealthy or at least difficult to deal with coping strategies, often difficult and non-normative behavior….
Are you equipped to handle such a child? They WILL have special needs they would not have if you had birthed them and raised them decently and respectfully (even if you made some mistakes along the way).
Please don’t assume that just because an older child can talk to you, that they will be willing (“you’re not my real mom!!!“) or able to express what they are going through. They are more likely to act up or shut down, because of what they’ve learned previously about trusting people, and/or because they do not understand what they are feeling and going through either.
I admit that birthing and raising a kid from the very start does not fully equip you for the challenges of living with a 6yo / 12 yo / 16 yo either, but at least you only need to handle the mess-ups you created yourself or that just – without being anybody’s fault – show up along the way!
Yes. I think raising children should not be taken lightly and often takes professionals, at least to help you along. It’s a myth that parenting just comes naturally to esp. mothers. They are all shit-scared, not only at first. Keep trying, ask for help and advice if you need it, and it’ll work out somehow.
↑ all this
The “solution” I see is, if somehow EVERYONE ELSE in the fam dies, and hubs and I are the literal ONLY ones left, we would take in the niece
I guarantee Mum and Dad would have a non-relative guardian lined up tho, and for good reason
My favorite thing is being the cool aunt to my nieces and generation-removed cousins. I get to get them cool gifts and give them the ice cream that their parents are too responsible to give them, and when they get a stinky diaper I get to give them back to their parents for the time being while I get to play.
OH M Y B E E L Z E B U B are you me from the future or the past or a nearby parallel dimension because my name is Emily and that is also my exact attitude towards children.
oh yes, being the cool aunt is awesome, especially when they love me for letting them watch tv and play games on their tablets/phone instead of insisting on the time limit my sister gives them. (which also meant that I got to enjoy my phone, instead of having to keep them occupied all day)
And when you then top it off by ordering in pizza…
Uncle, here.
My version is “I like other people’s pets, and other people’s children.”
Fuckin’ A. OTHER PEOPLE’S kids are awesome, a lot of the time.
see also: grandparents
Jup!
Even as a professional, i much prefer kids that i am fully responsible for while at work, but not at all responsible for when i go home. I’d take 6hrs with 18 kids (and 1-2 more adults) over 1 kid 24hrs any time!
(most parents i know feel exactly oppositely)
My dad always said that was his favourite part of being a grandfather. You could give the kid back when it cried or smelled.
“oh it’s different when it’s YOURS” — because your brain/body have been designed by natural selection to pump hormones to brainwash you into bonding with your new baby.
(Because parents who don’t bond enough to put up with sleep dep and poop are less likely to have been your ancestors on account of dead children.)
had a FoaF who while she was knocked up was wont to tell me “oh my god i can feel my brain changing”.
Always told her “don’t be ridiculous, your brain doesn’t have nerve endings” but that didn’t reassure her like it should have. Anyhow, last i saw her she was a happy exhausted parent of a healthy little girl.
Evolution, amirite?
“…because your brain/body have been designed by natural selection to pump hormones to brainwash you into bonding with your new baby.”
This is true, but it’s also true that this doesn’t change the fact that those hormones do make you, like, *actually* love and care deeply about your kid in a for-real way and actually bond meaningfully with them! Like, cake only tastes good because natural selection led to neuronal triggering of dopamine hits when you taste sugar or whatever…but it doesn’t mean you don’t *actually* like cake – even if you 85% do because you’re biologically programmed to, you still definitely do like it!
Ana Chronistic, I worked in a kindergarten, babysat babies from 14 and assisted in raising my 19 years old younger brother.
My son is 5 months old and its definitely different when its yours
Awwwww.
Seriously though, enjoy it Joyce, ’cause I guarantee you do not actually want kids.
Given the subculture she comes from I assume she’s handled babies before.
Joyce is a germaphobe and hates messes and smelly stuff. I guarantee she THINKS she wants babies. She does not.
Aren’t those character traits based on the author’s upbringing, and doesn’t he happily have children?
Joyce isn’t a 1 to 1 parallel with Willis and Willis had his kids decades after graduating university. Joyce might get there at some point but as she stands right now, she reaaaaaalllly would not like kids.
Bro it sounds like you’re over generalizing your own dislike of childrearing to everyone.
There are people who, honestly, want to have kids. Even as early as college. My sister knew her first year that she wanted a kid. Got pregnant last year to her boyfriend, they had the kid. Happy as they come, got married a year later, had another kid that same year.
Some people legit love parenting. And considering Joyce is heavily based on Willis…
There are definitely people who like parenting, but considering Joyce has been shown to be a germaphobe who can’t even handle a toenail falling off without losing her mind, I’m not sure she would end up being one of them.
Things change. Consider it immersion therapy. After the first couple months, she’d barely notice.
Ain’t that the truth. Ultimate sink or swim test, Joyce, you can’t return your kids to the store. 😛
For me, the “it’s different when it’s your own kid” is true of the human waste issue (no pun intended, really). I lived 45 years without changing a single diaper. When I had kids, I just started doing it, no big deal.
It’s like, if I’m in a restaurant and a tiny fly lands in my food, I’ll spend time carefully removing all the food it might have touched. If I’m camping, I’ll just brush the fly away and eat the food.
That’s true of some people, but the question is whether or not it’ll apply to Joyce.
We really won’t know until she tries, and both directions is just projecting.
Mm, I disagree. I’m also a bit of a germaphobe but in inconsistent ways. It’s a neuroses things and it’s not really rational. Stuff you’d encounter with kids might not bother Joyce. In addition to probably having handled kids in her upbringing, Joyce has a dog. She’s probably picked up the dog’s poop. It’s revolting but picking up poop is something you get used to and would inure you to diapers.
I don’t have a lot of experience with kids but I spent a day with my cousin and her then 2 and a half year old nephew. He at one point wanted me to blow a whistle he had. The whistle had already been in his mouth and on the ground. These facts bothered me immensely. I blew the whistle anyway. I wouldn’t have gotten over the anxiety for any adult but that little boy? Absolutely
Joyce is not yet prepared to have kids but this ztrip is good evidence of her wanting them.
I think Joyce wants kids based on what she knows now, but I don’t think she’d necessarily handle it well when she was actually looking after one. Joyce was the youngest and her oldest brother just got married – handling kids isn’t guaranteed. And in my house, my dad handled picking up dog poop when we still had a backyard and we weren’t fundamentalists devoted to strict gender roles. That sounds more like something her upbringing would consider a job for boys.
This is a very good point!
I guess the “different when it’s your own“ might kick in and then their messes would be fine…. but it is true, Joyce, you can’t even handle toe nails falling off. I know a kid it happened to twice before she was four years old.
This, and other gross things, you will HAVE to deal with.
Please wait at least five more years to reassess and also to grow more mature.
(i, for sure, am SO glad i did. i really wanted kids when i was 18, and even brainwashed into wanting to get married and become a mother and housewife, and i am eternally glad i didn’t try to get pregnant with the awful guy i was dating back then… )
Maybe not intimately. Joyce is the youngest of her siblings.
Also, Joyce got freaked out about the possibility of losing a toenail. She is ready for NOTHING about the birth process.
RIGHT.
or the “yes, your child will have gross accidents all the freaking time“.
Baby-barf on Joyce in three… two… one…
Right there with you, Joyce. That warm-milk-and-inadequatly-cleaned-diaper-smell somehow manages to go right into the reptile brain.
Tbh I feel like Joyce would enjoy being a mother. But more like…adopting an older child kind of mother. That feels oddly fitting for her
Panel four: We have liftoff.
I thought that only worked with pie!
Ahhh, so THIS is the week that Jacob’s older brother visits.
OH. I was wondering who Harrison and Jamie were.
I’m glad someone remembered Harrison’s name. (cause I didn’t.)
Jaime, not Jamie. Subtle diff.
She looks like Pepe le Pew floating that way.
Pepe Le Pew is one of those characters I am always conflicted about. While on one hand most of his episode focus on his stalking and obsessing over his target of interest, on the other hand the JOKE of the episode is often that very same tactic being turned against him much to his horror.
The way he floats is just funny though I will agree.
Yeah. He’s not big on boundries or consent that skunk.
The Return of Goatee Baby!
. . . Also is Baby smell just the alternating smell of Baby Powder and the foulest of foulest poops/pukes?
. . . Also Joyce in full baby mode is beyond adorable. It is VERY easy to see why Becky crushed on her so hard.
Actually, depending on the baby’s diet, it’s poop may have almost no smell. It’s still gross, but mostly in a tactile fashion. Poop doesn’t really get foul smelling until the kid starts digesting more complex food.
When babies are very little they smell milky and sweet. And if they’re breastfed, their poop smells, no joke, like buttered popcorn. It’s weird.
The new baby smell is almost as good as the new car smell. But the baby is usually cuter. And more expensive.
It’s really interesting to me how many people in the comments seem to like the smell of babies. I find the smell really repulsive, even though there’s no objective “it smells like [bad thing]” to base the reaction on. Baby smell is just gross to me.
Then again, my maternal instincts apparently just failed to manifest. To me, their smell is disgusting, they look creepy, and the sound of their crying makes me hyper aggressive toward the baby (as opposed to trying to protect it, which would at least be a reasonable excuse/advantage for the reaction).
People have different odors depending on age, diet, health, gender, and kinship.
Yes, babies smell different. Even freshly cleaned babies, using unscented everything.
Also, “morbid obesity” is a real thing. People who are excessively fat smell the same as people who are very sick. At least to me.
It’s probably the ketosis. Or the general difficulty of cleaning yourself. Assuming they’re not actual slobs, I mean.
BABY!
I’m really not sure which of the beings in the last panel has the creepier eyes.
The baby. It’s the way its eyes are angled.
Looks like someone blew up big eyes and put it on a person.
*bug
Way to see a typo 12 hours too late.
First there was The Horse Whisperer.
Now comes… Joyce, The Baby Sniffer.
Who needs gravity when you have BABY?
*cues up some Amy Grant*
Baby, Baby
I’m taken with the notion
To love you with
The sweetest of devotion!
call the police
It’s probably not a good thing if you can smell the presence of a baby. They might need a diaper change.
Joyce just has a +50 to her ability to sense other people’s auras.
To be fair, babies do have a characteristic smell besides poopy diapers
https://youtu.be/nQulV8cjAq8
Accurate and proper response to baby.
So does the baby look like a Harrison or a Jaime to you?
Jaime’s the baby, we’ve already been told before that Harrison is the name of Jacob’s older brother (who has a kid).
Oh shit it’s Jacob’s brother.
Oh shit we’re gonna get more drama on that front.
Oh man Joyce please don’t be weird with Jacob anymore like you can secretly lust for him no one can really help that but don’t try to steal him from Raidah I know you said you’d given up on that but saying is different from doing.
Although I get the sense that Jacob isn’t very happy with his life. Maybe Joyce can be the person to help him realise that just because it’s what’s expected for him to do, isn’t what’s best for him to do.
Come on, give me Joyce and Jacob bonding over the baby while Raidah fumes. It’ll give us something to enjoy while we wait to learn what terrors Mike has in mind for Walky.
I think Raidah is gonna blow it by leaning on the law school issue too hard.
I’ve had the impression that Jacob sees his brother as a role model he’s afraid he can’t live up to, or maybe he’s felt like he’s always lived in his shadow.
Joyce might be inclined to go for dating Jacob even more, now that there’s adorable extended family in the picture….
Aw man, this strip is totally babies!
underrated
It’s just the one baby actually.
Joyce counts as a big baby in many ways.
That’s cute, but I’m just imagining a random person going up and screaming BABY at my nephew.
REPRODUCE.
I’m not sure Joyce’s ovaries are quite as strong as Hazel’s yet.
http://girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-chaser-617
I should read GWS.
Childfree myself for varying reasons (abusive upbringing I’m terrified of emulating, way too many mental illnesses run in the family, crippling dysphoria, lmfao) but OMG, is this literally just me the second somebody brings a baby into my workplace. They’re just… so… dang…. BABY
I’m the same way. I’ve chosen not to have children; that’s different from not wanting to. But other people’s babies? I am SO THERE OMG.
I’m the same. I never had kids because I didn’t want to pass on what my parents did to me. I love kids, though.
That’s the mood. I’ve already decided I don’t want to have children under any circumstances, but other people’s kids are great. When they’re not like, obnoxious due to poor parenting that is.
I really want my brother to have kids. Being an aunt, I could get all the best parts of having a kid (drawings, love, giving them candy, teaching them swears) and none of the responsibility
Unfortunately, unless my brother drastically changes his mind, I don’t think I’m getting any niblings. (He thinks babies are creepy, is annoyed by little kids even if he treats them w respect, and is aro/ace af as far as anyone can tell.) So I’ll just have to see if any of my friends wanna have kids so I can swoop in with a cape and sunglasses as Super Uncle or something.
To me newborn humans look like alien potatoes and have never produced a smell I enjoyed.
you’re not alone
Snort their scalp.
Larval earth-biped!
Why does Joyce have this ability? The fact that she can smell babies from a distance is actually weirder to me than her ability to teleport.
It’s the poo.
Some people just have really good, if sometimes fickle, noses.
If the air currents are just right, you catch a whiff.
Is she just levitating in panel 4?
Ah-hyup. So much for no one having superpowers in this universe . . .
Is that Sarah’s sibling?
Pretty sure it’s Jacob’s brother, carrying his son in one of those baby backpack things.
Frontpack. That’s a tie knot just above Jaime’s head.
i think its called a baby bjorn?
Dear Joyce: IF that is Jacob’s brother’s baby, and if you were to marry him RIGHT NOW, then you could be the cool aunt to this baby.
//Joyce’s hormons.
Dear Joyce: We could be making one of these with Jacob RIGHT NOW. GET ON IT!!
-Joyce’s ovaries
Honestly, that headline reads like something Dorothy should be experiencing and I think that’s the tragedy of her arc thus far; for all her ambition, she can’t see past her own grades and it’s making her miss all these opportunities that are born from socializing and meeting people.
The fact that she actually thinks grades will help her become president is really sad. She’s living in a fantasy meritocracy world and is in for a whole lot of hurt when she realizes the truth.
Nothing better than the smell of fresh-baked human.
awwww, Joyce. Your heroic deed is not forgotten (I know for a fact that Becky has never forgotten it). and if anyone needs reminding it looks like the Toe is gearing up for round two.
“Can you float through the air when you smell a delicious baby?”
“Come on, Joyce!”
…if you can smell a baby from a distance it’s generally noooot a good sign
Saw Joyce, immediately thought of Snuffles, the dog, who would levitate for a dog biscuit.
Snuffles is my Spirit Animal
Babies. Joyce’s ultimate weakness. I like this!
Oh boy, I can’t wait to see what blatant disregard for boundaries is gonna come out of THIS.
Baby-barf on Joyce if I am any judge.
Honestly, when babies are involved, if all you’re getting on you is what’s coming out of THAT end that’s not bad.
man, that is so babies
Ah-gah, yes!
today’s strip has Hanna/Barbera fingerprints all over it
Off topic question :
Is Blaine unaware of AmaziGirl’s identity? Is he evil or stupid?
No reason to think he’s aware of it. He saw AG once and promptly got his face stomped in.
He also appears to have a hi-res photo of her face.
He has a photo. How hi-res it is, is open to question.
The answer to both your questions is “yes”.
Willis, are you CERTAIN Joyce has no superpowers in this universe? Cause this seems awfully suspicious when combined with her punching strength XD
Purely FWIW, my headcanon is that DoA Joyce has superpowers but, because this isn’t the superhero world of It’s Walky, no-one is on the lookout for signs of superpowers and she’s never really noticed as she’s always been that way!
I love how she got to the baby: she floated there. Look at her legs, she didnt run or walk there.
Joyce day seems to have started good.
My son was born 12 weeks early. While it gave ME a startling appreciation of miracles, I can’t see Joyce able to ever get past an “OMG! He’s so little & so cute!” stage. She teeters on the edge of freak out when things don’t conform to her narrow view of the world.
What, did Joyce pick up on the scent of the baby’s diaper?
It may be a joke, but babies actually exude pheromones to help convince their parents to love them. It’s evolution, bay-bay.
As a parent, I bet Willis knows all too well.