Parenting & Family Quote by Tina Fey

Fey takes a sterile-sounding appeal to authority -- "a Harvard Medical School study" -- and uses it as comedic camouflage for something much darker and more recognizable: the petty power struggles baked into modern parenting. The first sentence is deliberately bland, all credentialed seriousness and consumer-guidance utility. Then she pivots hard with "Plus", a word that signals the real point was never medical accuracy. The punchline reframes a caregiving act as a dominance ritual, smuggling workplace hierarchy ("who's boss") into the nursery.

The joke lands because it exposes an uncomfortable truth without moralizing: parenting culture often oscillates between anxious optimization (the best thermometer, the best method, the best data) and a simmering need for control when everything feels uncontrollable. A baby can't be reasoned with, negotiated with, or productivity-hacked. So the fantasy of asserting authority shows up in absurd places, like temperature-taking, where the stakes are both intimate and ridiculous.

Context matters: Fey's comedy persona thrives on puncturing aspirational seriousness, especially the kind associated with elite institutions and middle-class self-improvement. By invoking Harvard, she skewers how easily we outsource judgment to prestige. By snapping to "who's boss", she undercuts the sanctimony of "good parenting" with the admission that sometimes adults just want to win. The laugh comes from recognition: the baby will not, in fact, learn anything about hierarchy -- but the parent will feel, for half a second, less powerless.