Raising a Good Enough Baby

Andy Borowitz’s The Good Enough Baby, from this week’s New Yorker: “There are many misconceptions about babies and baths. The old saying ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’ implies that the baby is something amazing that you’d want to keep, while the bathwater is something disgusting that you’re right to throw out. Well, who made the bathwater disgusting? That’s right, the baby. The bathwater was probably drinkable before the baby, caked with the remains of meals (and worse), polluted it. A better, less contradictory saying would be ‘Don’t give your baby a bath.’”

Raising a Good Enough Baby