The Burden of Parenthood

Sex education arrives at Roseville Middle School, complete with an unhinged teacher, mechanical babies, and detention "forever" for Mike. Paulo just wanted to play house with Lucy — nobody warned him he'd fall in love with a screaming doll named Alegria.

The Burden of Parenthood
Chapter	5 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	July 15, 2011 (2011-07-15)
Page count	7
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Paulo, Daisy, Yashy, Sex-Ed Teacher
Minor characters	David, Katie, Stacy
Locations	Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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← Unfit for Education	Flying Lessons →
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Synopsis

The sex-ed teacher opens class with a lecture that is less health class and more hellfire sermon. Sex equals babies, contraception is "DEAD wrong," and even surgical removal of the offending organ won't save you from the STDs. Yashy, who has been listening carefully and understanding nothing, loudly asks Mike whether he's been making "Mom" abort every day. Mike earns himself detention "forever".

As a scare tactic, the teacher wheels in a cart of mechanical babies and pairs the class off to parent them over the weekend, with a log due Monday. Mike is assigned Daisy, and Yashy greets the news with a screamed "WHORE!!!" Lucy, meanwhile, is assigned Paulo, who wastes no time shoving Mike out of the seat next to her.

Daisy's little bundle of joy, screaming as always.

The dolls all have unique faces, and Daisy has drawn the short straw. While Lucy's baby wears a cheerful little smile, hers is frozen in a permanent scream. She lovingly names him Alegria anyway. Lucy dryly offers "Such a contagious smile," and Yashy suggests the name "diarrhea" instead.

Married life doesn't suit Lucy. When Paulo swans up playing doting husband, she tells him she wants a divorce, full custody, and his child support on time. He wins her back with a sparkly-eyed "We can make this work..", then insults the baby's looks the second she hands it over.

Daisy happens by while Lucy is teaching Paulo the proper way to cradle a doll, and she melts at the sight. She wants Mike to hold Alegria the same way, but Mike wants none of it ("He freaks me out!!"), so she plants the baby in Paulo's hands instead. Paulo trails off mid-protest, gazing down at Alegria amid flowers and sparkles. Mike and Lucy seize the moment to quietly ditch their partners.

Come Monday, Lucy has covered her tracks by filling out the log as if she'd stayed with Paulo. Paulo himself is a changed cat. He tells David that his baby "looked at me like he UNDERSTOOD me…", and he would appreciate no judgement about the baby carriage he bought. When the teacher confiscates Alegria and checks him over, she smiles for the first time all chapter and declares him the best result of the class.

The teacher does wonder why Paulo is raising Michael's child, but Mike improvises a divorce-and-remarriage story, and the realism impresses her enough to award extra credit. Daisy glomps her hero while the teacher shrieks that this is how you get syphilis. Filing out past the doll cart, Paulo spots Alegria sitting among the others with tears running down his face, and chokes out a farewell to his "SON…" Lucy pops in behind him with a one-word review: "Wuss".

Character dynamics

• Paulo and Daisy: Before this chapter the two barely interact one-on-one, and they aren't even assigned to each other here. Daisy is the one who puts Alegria in Paulo's hands, and his hidden soft side does the rest. By Monday they've finished the assignment together, and she's calling him "my hero". The pairing only lasts a weekend, but Paulo's soft spot for babies follows him into Helping Hands.

Trivia & observations

• The chapter is a redraw of one of the comic's earliest chapters, made in 2010 during Volume One's production and edited again for the Omnibus. Veronica calls the original "one of my most popular chapters back in the day." The redraw is also why the schedule looks so strange: pages 1-4 went up in one batch in March 2010, and pages 5-7 followed 479 days later.
• The redrawn chapter was also printed as a convention minicomic, alongside Helping Hands and the aquarium chapter, to promote the comic around Volume One's release.
• The confiscation scene is autobiographical. Veronica recalls her own teacher taking her robot baby away when she was sixteen, even though she'd hoped to keep it. "Anyway, I feel you Paulo."
• Yashy's counter-suggestion "diarrhea" rhymes with Alegria on purpose, per Veronica.
• This is the first appearance of the sex-ed teacher, who never does get a name, and of both Katie and Stacy.

Related chapters

• Flying Lessons: Right after this chapter, parenthood goes from a joke to the real thing. Yashy, so far mostly a heckler, becomes an adoptive mother herself when Chirpy comes along.
• Helping Hands: Paulo and Daisy team up again to nurture something small and fragile, this time an injured bird. Daisy embarrasses him by mentioning his skill at caring for babies.
• Unrequited: Alegria gets named on panel again years later. Daisy tells Tess about Paulo's tender side and has to clarify that Alegria was her baby, not an ex-girlfriend.
• Pep Rally: The sex-ed teacher's paranoia resurfaces here. She misreads Mike and Lucy's banter and lunges at them through the volleyball net.