‘Get Your Sh*t Together, Baby’ Books Take Jabs At Lack Of Paid Parental Leave
By Alexa Heah, 25 Apr 2023
In collaboration with Paid Leave for All and Glamour, creative agency Mother in LA has released a series of books—titled Get Your Sh*t Together, Baby—as part of a public awareness campaign steeped in satire to highlight the lack of paid parental leave in the United States.
The books, designed to look just like the kinesthetic baby books found in bookstores all over, “teach” newborns how to raise and care for themselves when their parents are inadvertently forced back to the office.
Naturally, trying to guide an infant to boil water for their own bottle or figure out how debt works in order to pay for childcare isn’t possible in the real world, and that’s exactly the point. The move hopes to bring to the forefront how “ridiculous” and serious the wider issue is.
“Every one of us will need to give or receive care in our lives, and paid leave is one of the most impactful and popular policies in the country. The fact that we still don’t have it in the United States is not funny, it’s tragic,” quipped Dawn Huckelbridge, Director at Paid Leave for All.
“But we want to break through the noise of Washington with comedy, with storytelling, with anger, and with optimism, and this partnership with Glamour aims to do that at a scale we haven’t reached before,” she added.
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the series of books will be made available on the magazine’s website, Instagram, and TikTok as storytime reads by comedians, actors, and television hosts, including Jenna Dewan, Karamo Brown, and more.
In addition, the volumes will be broadcasted on digital displays, videos, audio, and print advertisements around the country, as well as on a massive Times Square takeover. Supporters can take action by signing the petition here.
“Working parents and families in America shouldn’t have to accept this appalling status quo, and we hope this campaign ignites a national conversation that those in power can no longer ignore,” summed up Natasha Pearlman, Executive Editor at Glamour.
[via Mother in LA, images courtesy]