Parenting & Family Quote by Art Linkletter

Linkletter’s line is a neat piece of mid-century TV dad logic: a folksy mic-drop that converts a messy cultural fight into a clean analogy. He’s not arguing about marijuana’s effects so much as defending his right to judge it without the badge of personal experimentation. The setup matters: “kids” positions the questioners as naive and unserious, while he adopts the role of seasoned adult authority. It’s paternalism in a cardigan.

The obstetrician comparison does double work. First, it borrows the prestige of medicine to lend his moral stance a veneer of professional expertise. Second, it frames lived experience as optional when standards, training, or “common sense” supposedly suffice. That’s the intent: to shut down the counterpunch of “you don’t know because you haven’t tried,” which was becoming a popular rejoinder as 1960s youth culture started challenging adult prohibitions.

The subtext is more revealing than the punchline. Pregnancy is an experience coded as uniquely female, bodily, and undeniable; it’s also surrounded by norms of protection and risk. By invoking it, Linkletter smuggles marijuana into the same category of danger that responsible adults manage for others. The analogy also quietly shifts the debate from evidence to authority: the question becomes who gets to speak, not what the drug does.

Historically, this lands in an era when Linkletter became a prominent anti-drug voice, shaped by personal tragedy and amplified by a media ecosystem hungry for simple, broadcast-ready certainties. The joke works because it’s crisp, but it also reveals how easily cultural anxieties get laundered into “practical” wisdom.