#TLDR Maggie is the catalyst for the entire series as we know it and everything that happens in it and all the characters being who they are

[allieinarden]

Been thinking on how Maggie would technically still be a brand new member of the Simpson family if the timeline wasn't however many seasons long. Don't know what to do with those thoughts but I have been having them.

I’m so glad you brought this up because it happens to be something I think about continuously. I need everybody to embrace my theory of The Simpsons where the family having an unexpected brand-new member is fundamental to all of the characters as we’re currently (constantly) perceiving them:

Marge’s difficulties with her, up to this point, uneventful marriage (tempted to have an affair a few episodes in!) are the result of all her hormones still resettling combined with the stress of the pregnancy itself where Homer struggled to come to terms with the fact that he had to go back to his old job, and wasn’t very emotionally supportive as a result. As her older two children grow up, she’s gaining a sense of her identity outside of motherhood, while the new baby is simultaneously tying her more closely to the heart of her home than ever. She’s both more rooted and more unsettled than she’s ever been before and that conflict is reflected in her episodes.

In the episode “Lisa the Simpson” we’re told that Bart was a good student when he was in Lisa’s year, before his grades took a rapid dive from which they never recovered. The episode attributes this to a “Simpson gene” which makes all the male members of the Simpson family lose their intelligence at the age of eight. I have not lost my intelligence and think it’s very obvious that Bart is still trying to recover from all the aforementioned sources of stress that would have occurred right around that exact point in time. He faced some upheaval shortly before we met him and the Bart we know now is still trying to get his head above water.

Lisa tends to feel neglected and overlooked, identifies herself with her intelligence to the point where she has an identity crisis any time she’s not the smartest person in the room, and is constantly embarking on socially disruptive moral crusades. All of the above are clearly the actions of a child who was the baby of the family for most of her life and is now actively engaged in determining her value beyond that designation.

And finally, Homer’s contribution to his family up to this point has been completely based on his role as the provider, having spent the better part of the past decade since he and his high school sweetheart had that accidental pregnancy paying off the family’s debts and looking forward to the time when he had definitively done right by them and could transition to a lower-paying job without worry. Instead, the presence of yet another unexpected baby and his transition to the role of safety inspector have forced him to an awareness of the fact that his responsibility is ongoing, that his other two children—at ages eight and ten—aren’t babies anymore, that it’s no longer going to be enough to clock in every day to provide for them and then clock out and nurse a well-earned beer, that they now need him in a way they didn’t before and that leaving all the parenting to Marge is no longer going to be enough. I think that this reflects a reality of life for many working parents whose primary duty hasn’t been at home, until suddenly their home starts to demand them. That’s why The Simpsons doesn’t take place in 1989 or 2024 or any year in between, it takes place in the year that Homer Simpson becomes a father.