Parenting & Family Quote by Jean Kerr

Kerr’s joke lands because it treats motherhood not as a glowing life milestone but as a logistical, inescapable fact. The dashy aside - “and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this” - is doing the real work: it’s a preemptive eye-roll at the culture of breathless revelation around parenting, as if every exhausted new parent is also discovering gravity. Her punchline, “thereafter you have it,” is almost aggressively literal, shrinking a whole mythology of maternal destiny into the plainest possible sentence.

The intent isn’t to diminish children; it’s to puncture the sentimental script that pretends a baby is an event rather than a permanent condition. Kerr’s subtext: the romance of “having a baby” is socially celebrated because it sounds finite, chosen, and flattering. “You have it” shifts the grammar from achievement to possession, obligation, and daily maintenance. It’s the difference between a ceremony and a responsibility. The comedy comes from that sudden recalibration, the way a single pronoun turns a fantasy into a schedule.

Context matters: Kerr wrote in mid-century America, when domesticity was marketed as feminine fulfillment and public candor about ambivalence was frowned on. Her wit smuggles dissent in a friendly wrapper. By sounding almost absurdly obvious, she makes it safe to admit what many people feel: the shock isn’t the birth, it’s the permanence. The line is a tiny revolt against idealization, delivered with a smile sharp enough to leave a mark.