the-future-of-chores
Explanation
The Joke
A woman reads from her phone that in ten years there will be robots that shovel snow, take the trash out, and do the dishes. Her husband reacts with dawning horror: "What?! But... then why... why did we... OH GOD!" The caption below reads: "I'm beginning to reconsider parenthood."
The implication is that the couple had children primarily (or at least partly) as a source of free labor for household chores. Now that robots will soon handle those tasks, the father realizes they went through the enormous effort and expense of raising children for nothing.
The Humor
The joke plays on the dark, unspoken truth that parents sometimes rely on their children to help with household chores like shoveling, taking out trash, and doing dishes. By exaggerating this to its logical extreme -- that chore labor was the entire reason for having kids -- the comic creates a hilariously cynical take on parenthood. The husband's existential crisis over the news is funny because it inverts the expected emotional response; instead of celebrating that robots will make life easier, he is devastated that his children have been rendered obsolete. The humor also pokes fun at how quickly technology can make long-standing human institutions (in this case, child labor disguised as "building character") seem unnecessary.