Parenting & Family Quote by Antonin Scalia

Domestic comedy from a Supreme Court justice lands because it’s disarmingly human and strategically evasive. Scalia borrows the low-stakes logic of breakfast to talk about the high-stakes project of raising kids: the first attempt is messy, uneven, maybe a little burnt, and that’s not a moral failing. It’s iteration. The joke works as a pressure valve, letting parents laugh at the absurd expectation that they should master a life-altering craft on their first try.

The subtext is quietly radical for a public figure associated with rigor and combat. In court Scalia was famous for treating arguments like formal puzzles with right answers; here he admits family life is closer to improvisation. Calling the first child “the first pancake” isn’t just self-deprecation, it’s a rejection of perfectionism as a parenting ethic. Big families, in this framing, function like a built-in feedback loop: you learn, you adjust, you keep going. Experience accumulates, and the early errors become survivable, even narratable.

Context matters because Scalia’s public persona could read as austere, even severe. The warmth of the metaphor softens that edge, presenting him less as ideological warrior and more as father in the kitchen, making peace with limits. It also slips in a pronatalist shrug: lots more are “coming along,” as if abundance itself is the answer to anxiety. The line flatters ordinary people’s competence while excusing their early stumbles, which is why it sticks. It offers absolution without sentimentality: your first draft is allowed to be lumpy. Keep cooking.