Where Do Babies Come From?

Photograph by Evan Kafka/Getty

Babies are everywhere. If you peer into the next stroller you see, I guarantee that you’ll encounter a baby, unless it belongs to one of those people who walk their dog around in a stroller. But where do these little people keep coming from? I’ve done some research into the miracle that is new human life, and here are some of the ways that I believe babies have been appearing in the world:

At magic shows, magicians will pull things out of their sleeves. I’ve seen them produce flowers, scarves, cards—heck, even a living rabbit! They’d have no trouble making a baby appear. The reason most magicians don’t regularly pull babies out of their sleeves onstage is that, if they did, they’d have to take care of the babies, because there would be audience members willing to testify that the magician was the parent of the baby. What magicians prefer to do is to make babies come out of their sleeves in private, so that they can force other people to raise them. Magicians are notoriously absent parents because they like to disappear all the time. That’s why babies are given to responsible, non-disappearing parents.

If the baby wasn’t created by a magician, it may well have been made by an evil villain with a volcanic lair that shoots out infants into people’s homes, thereby making them the parents of the baby. The evil villain then closes up the top of the volcano as if it were just another volcano lair that doesn’t propel infants into the sky. “But babies are nice things, and not evil!” I hear you saying. That is true—even villains do nice things sometimes, like when large companies have community-outreach programs. Evil villains are notoriously absent parents, because they are evil villains. That’s why babies are given to parents who aren’t evil villains.

The third possibility goes something like the “turtles all the way down” theory of the universe, except that it’s “babies all the way down.” I don’t mean to say that there are babies stacked on top of each other but rather that, when we are not looking, one baby splits into two babies. Babies are notoriously absent parents, mostly because they’re busy splitting into other babies all day, and they can hardly provide for themselves, let alone another baby. That’s why babies are given to responsible non-baby parents.

Another viable hypothesis regarding the origin of babies is that they come from cigarette ash. When someone ashes a cigarette into an ashtray, after a few hours, just like the phoenix, the babies rise from the ashes and crawl to the nearest maternity ward to be given to adult humans. This is why most newborn babies smell faintly of tobacco. Cigarettes are notoriously absent parents, because they are inanimate objects. That’s why babies are given to responsible parents that do not cause cancer and emphysema.

You may have heard that storks are involved in the production of babies. This is a lie. The bird that is actually sometimes responsible for the existence of babies is the bald eagle. You can tell that a baby has been created by a bald eagle if it is very patriotic. Most often, patriotic babies’ first words are, “America is the single greatest nation that God ever bestowed upon man.” Sadly, bald eagles are notoriously absent parents, because they are too busy flying out of White House windows for dramatic effect. That’s why babies are given to responsible, non-avian parents.

There’s another popular myth that suggests that a man and a woman are the ones that make the baby. This is so ridiculous that I’m surprised anyone has ever believed it. How would big people make small people? Big people may not be able to make babies, but, in general, big people are decent parents. That’s why we give them babies.