The age of the average first-time mother is ticking up to 27. Members of Generation Z, the oldest of them in their late 20s, are often ambivalent about children. They’re worried about getting their finances in order, achieving self-actualization, and solving climate change first. All pretty tall, if not impossible, orders. With Vogue dipping into the discourse to ask, “Have Babies Become a Luxury Item?” it’s no wonder people aren’t having babies like they used to. Add to that the complete lack of cultural cachet — “Just unfollowed someone for being pregnant girl bye,” says a recent X post with 129,000 likes — and it’s a wonder anyone gets pregnant at all. 

The reality is that most women want to have children, or if they didn’t at some point, then over time, they come to. In Netflix’s new Amy Schumer comedy Kinda Pregnant, we meet Lainy (Amy Schumer), whose approach is much less neurotic and conflicted than the mothers and would-be-mothers Hollywood usually shows us. “Being a mom is the greatest thing a human being can do,” says our young heroine to her best friend on the school playground. Here is a young girl on-screen unexpectedly extolling the virtues of motherhood, even if she does precede her declaration by berating her companion during birthing mother imaginative play: “I can’t do it! It hurts! I hate you, bitch! Sorry, but the expectant mother often lashes out at her support system.” 

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know what the catch is. Fast forward a few decades and desperate-to-be-a-mother Lainy and best friend Kate (Jillian Bell) are in their 40s. Over brunch, they discuss their separate life updates: Lainy has broken up with her boyfriend of four years, who, instead of proposing marriage, has proposed a threesome. Kate, already married, is expecting a baby. In shock, Lainy demands that she “get rid of it” before coming to her senses and congratulating her, a moment that appears intended to elicit laughs but simply makes Lainy’s already volatile character less sympathetic. Accompanying Kate to a maternity store, Lainy tries on a fake baby bump just to see how it feels. She ends up wearing it out, being delighted by the public courtesy she receives, and dropping into a prenatal yoga class. There, she meets a friend, and later, that friend’s cute brother. The bump stays on, the fake baby stays secret, and shenanigans ensue.

Kinda Pregnant is kind of a pregnancy movie that takes cues from raunchy motherhood rom-coms such as Knocked Up (2007) and Babes (2024). Lainy’s new friend, Megan, is the type of “cool” mother who openly complains about how angry she feels and says of her toddler, “cute little face almost tore my asshole open,” within earshot of him. Lainy’s coworker Fallon ups the ante on shock value with a few unprintable one-liners. So when it tries to get serious, it has a hard time jumping from the father at the gender reveal party pushing a baseball bat suggestively out of his crotch to the first scene that’s meant to give us some truth about motherhood. “It’s just all so isolating,” Megan sighs somberly after Lainy accidentally lights on fire and quickly extinguishes her polyester baby bump. “Think about it: How many birth stories do you know?” 

That may have been more true a few decades ago, but today, older mothers in real life and especially on the internet seem to relish in ambushing unsuspecting pregnant women with their birth horror stories. Tonally, Kinda Pregnant is inflicting whiplash, hoping to roll raunchy comedy, motherhood real talk, and cute rom-com together. It’s all been done before, but the movie forgets about the one thing that makes it unique. Many other movies will tell you that parenthood is hard or dare to make jokes about semen. Few of them will address what can be one of the most difficult aspects of pregnancy: getting there in the first place. 

Going through pregnancy is hard. First-hand or not, we all know it — unless we’re the archetypically clueless father in one of these movies. What we don’t hear often is that pregnancy is also good, and it’s an incredible gift for the mother lucky enough to experience it. Kinda Pregnant may waffle between crassly unfunny and overly preachy on the trials of motherhood, but it has one big bright spot: it lets its protagonist unapologetically desire marriage and motherhood — even if she’s loony enough to walk around with a fake baby bump. In that, it may have more to say to most actually existing women than a dozen more serious-seeming big-screen depictions of pregnancy.

Madeline Fry Schultz is the contributors editor at the Washington Examiner.