Babies
Babies
It doesn't seem right that we're old enough to have kids. [Megan holds a baby upside-down by one leg.] Megan: Sweet! We made a baby! Cueball: Are we sure we did it right? Cueball: We should disassemble it, check all the parts, and put it back together.

A common theme of xkcd is that one never feels that one has "transitioned to adulthood," in the sense of actually attaining the seriousness and sense of responsibility that children imagine all adults to possess. Here, the author illustrates this by imagining Cueball and Megan taking on the ultimate "adult responsibility" — having a child, treating it as they would any other engineering project. Disassembling a project to check the parts is an activity that is appropriate for a self-built computer or robot, but most people would think that disassembling a child would be impractical. Also, unless they've taken Dr. Frankenstein's course on reassembling and reanimating human beings, this would result in a grisly end for the baby [ citation needed ] . Megan also shows her lack of child experience by holding the baby upside-down by the foot, which isn't a good idea. Her behavior could also indicate that Megan is treating the child as an object rather than a human being.
The title text implies that Randall will have kids someday. It will be surprising if they read this comic, not just because it will give them an unflattering look into their father's attitudes on having children, but because he plans to lock them in the cellar where there will be no internet access. This is possibly a reference to Kaspar Hauser , who, as a boy, claimed to have grown up in a dark cell in Germany in the 19th century, or to the incestuous children of Josef Fritzl .
This is also the topic of 674: Natural Parenting and 1384: Krypton .
Much later, a comic with the singular version of this title was released: 1650: Baby . Here, Cueball refrains from saying something as stupid as he does here about another couple's baby. The couple looks similar to the one in this comic, though that may just be due to the basic-looking art style of xkcd.
It doesn't seem right that we're old enough to have kids. [Megan holds a baby upside-down by one leg.] Megan: Sweet! We made a baby! Cueball: Are we sure we did it right? Cueball: We should disassemble it, check all the parts, and put it back together.
