Andrew Schulz special cover

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New York City comedian Andrew Schulz’s latest Netflix special, “LIFE,” satirically explores his personal journey into fatherhood and highlights the pro-family bent in American society. Filmed at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, the special strikes a different tone than Schulz’s typical cultural commentary, digging into the challenges he and his wife faced with in vitro fertilization.

The special opens with a montage of Schulz’s earlier years, leading up to the most consequential transition of his life: fatherhood. He humorously recounts their troubles with conception, which ultimately led them to pursue IVF. 

Schulz picks perfect anecdotes about the fertility treatments that encapsulate the emotional rollercoaster accompanying them. He blends his vulnerability with crude jokes to soften the blow and make his story feel more relatable.

“Now, IVF, very hard for the woman, OK, very expensive for the man. I don’t think we talk about that enough. The financial trauma associated with it: $30,000 for a kid,” Schulz said. “Yeah, I started looking up human trafficking just to see. I’m a capitalist. I’m a free market guy.” 

He diffuses his views on conception, IVF, and childbirth in his distinct style of comedy that balances vivid details with clever lines. His levity while discussing such an intimate topic opens the audience to laugh with him at the events that he describes. 

“Technically you could choose the gender of your baby, right?” Schulz said. “I told my wife. I was like, ‘Listen, if you want to choose the gender, we can choose the gender. OK, I’m just letting you know now whatever gender we choose it’s gonna stay that one. They’re not coming back here 15 years later, ‘I identify as this or that.’ I got paperwork. I spent 30 grand on the boys.” 

He rose to fame through this witty comedy which, while very funny, also subtly captures the waves of American culture. Schulz is brilliant, and he demonstrates his grasp of the changing views on family in his humor. 

Schulz reflects a growing trend evident in the last presidential election. Many liberals are taking a turn to the center and moderating, as it feels, the Overton window of political shifts to the right.

Schulz is the classic New York City liberal. His podcast often hosts political guests, and, over the last few years, his slow crawl to the center has accelerated. 

Like many Democrats, he is beginning to see the futility of cramming identity politics down the throats of working-class Americans. Schulz does not oppose the LGBTQ movement but shows that the old position of these identities, as more private than public, is coming back into style. 

In “LIFE,” Schulz touches on a topic that may seem secondary to the culture war over identity politics but is a downstream effect of much of the woke movement. As he shared, he and his wife had their daughter via IVF. IVF is a medical procedure developed at the waning of the sexual revolution, and one that has fierce supporters, and critics. 

Traditional Christians tend to oppose IVF on moral grounds, particularly because the method often involves discarding  human embryos. 

Regardless of how his daughter was conceived, Schulz’s open embrace of IVF accompanied a shift on his podcast, “Flagrant,” where he reflected that his marriage felt incomplete until his daughter was born. 

Schulz’s special makes light of the process and his feelings about becoming a girl dad, but like all good comedians, he makes a point underneath the humor. Families are good. Marriage ought to lead to family, and being a dad is the best part of his life. 

His call to action is a broad, necessary message for an America with a declining birth rate: we should live in a society with a pro-family tilt. 

Comedians use sarcasm and laughter to highlight issues , sometimes derisively to antagonize the opposing side. But no one walks away from “LIFE” thinking that Schulz regrets the birth of his daughter. 

Instead, Schulz leaves his audience with the impression that having a child is often a difficult, complicated process, filled with moments of humor, but one that fulfills a deep instinctual human urge.