The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes

[Athenna Jimenez]

I have seen interpretations of this proverb that focus on a possible altruistic or industrious dimension to its meaning. That, for example, the shoemaker is too busy to attend to his children. perhaps overworked to make even more basic ends meet.

Fan Works

• In Child of the Storm:
• Alison Carter is the former Deputy Director of SHIELD - and only missed out on the Directorship because of a mixture of politicking, HYDRA, and a very much justified desire for SHIELD and others not to pay too much attention to her family or they might figure out that they're all descended from Peggy and Steve. In general, she is incredibly on the ball and very insightful. She also completely fails to recognise that she's pushing her daughter away until it's too late, and while they do make up, it has generational consequences for her grandchildren. She later admits that she was a "far better spy than a mother", and is mostly grateful she's learned from her mistakes.
• The main tragedy of Doctor Strange is that thanks to his alterations by the Time Stone, he can fix almost everyone and everything, he can bend key events in time to his own ends, give everyone strong and happy family connections with which to endure all sorts of terrors... but he can't fix himself. He can't undo or fix Camlann. He could save everyone... except the people he loved. He is unsurprisingly phenomenally bitter under his cheerfully odd behaviour.
• Wanda, eventually, gets to at least act as a Parental Substitute to her godson, Harry, even if it is a decade or so late (thanks to It's Not You, It's My Enemies and Strange's warning). She can't do the same for her daughter - though in Hermione's case, she has a happy family, by Wanda's own contrivance, and Wanda wants a clean break/not to attach her baggage. Needless to say, it doesn't work out that way.
• In Dominoes, Shinichi's father Yuusaku is in charge of the Irregulars, a team of teenage superheroes whose secret identities are none other than all of Shinichi's friends. Shinichi himself is a powerful psychic with impressive investigational skills... yet Yuusaku not only refuses to train him, he does everything within his power to keep Shinichi Locked Out of the Loop and deny his dreams. This is because Yuusaku is a Control Freak who is trying to hide his son's potential. Those with superpowers are typically registered and monitored by the government; the Kudos are deliberately flouting the law by leaving Shinichi unregistered.
• In Foxfire despite being the owner of a tea shop, Pao is pretty bad at actually making tea and is reliant on Mushi and Li to do so. In Pao's defense, he's a much better businessman.
• Played seriously in Le Papillon Rising. As Mr. Noir, Gabriel Agreste takes a parental role to his younger partner Ladybug and wants to protect her from the supervillain le Papillon's advances. But in his civilian life, he neglects and distances himself from his traumatized son Adrien after the death of his wife Bridgette, which stemmed in Adrien becoming the supervillain le Papillon in the first place.
• Played for Laughs in the Fairy Tail fic Morning After Cliche: Rowen Edition, where Gajeel, Laxus, and Natsu (who was dragged along) confront the now adult Romeo and Wendy about having sex and Gajeel and Laxus not being happy that their younger Dragon Slayer had been "defiled". When Romeo snarks that Gajeel has his own daughter to do this for, Gajeel replies that he has Lily watching over Gilly's well-being and interest. Cue a Gilligan Cut where Lily is sleeping and five-year-old Gilly is reading some of her mother's risque books.
• New Vegas Showtime: The Translator Microbes that allow Ryuji to speak English were the work of Doctor 8, who can't communicate with others (Think Tank colleagues aside) due to his voice box being busted.
• Sherlock Holmes begins the fic Simple Gifts by noting the irony of his roommate, a doctor, being ill. He complains that the situation is worse because the illness would have needed time to develop, meaning that Watson didn't care for himself as he would have prescribed for a patient when the symptoms first emerged. As Holmes becomes increasingly worried, he remarks that once Watson has recovered enough, they're going to talk about the doctor's need to prioritize his own health.

The Cobblers Children Have No Shoes

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Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In a flashback in the episode "Helpers", Founders Island (the location of the last functioning human colony on Earth) was stricken by a deadly Synthetic Plague which wiped out nearly two-thirds of the population. However, the fatality rate of the Helper caste (the equivalent of caretakers or doctors) was one-hundred percent. Finn's mother Minerva was the only survivor, and only because she underwent last resort Brain Uploading.
• In As Told by Ginger, both of Macie's parents are therapists so naturally, she has to make appointments to see them, they forget her birthday and don't even know how old she is. The parents realize how neglectful they are and attempt to make it up to her. They're only in one episode, so we don't know how well that worked out.
• Played for Drama in "The Tale of Iroh" from the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Tales of Ba Sing Se". Iroh spends the whole day helping whoever he comes across, then mourns the fact that he was unable to do so for his own son.
• In the Batman Beyond episode "Payback," the high school counselor has little time for his own son, resulting in the son becoming the titular villain and targeting the stressors of his father's clients.
• Braceface had an episode where Sharon wanted to get a tattoo and her mother, a family councellor, wouldn't let her. While her mother is running a seminar on trust between parents and children and how to use that bond to protect your kids from making bad decisions, she uses 'convincing' Sharon not to get a tattoo as an example. An assistant then comes in and informs her that her daughter was sent to the hospital after passing out in a seedy tattoo parlour.
• In Danny Phantom, the titular character's parents are ghost hunters who spend the whole series not being able to figure out that their own son is half-ghost, up to including failing to notice that Danny's ghost self has the same freakin' first name as their son. Lampshaded in "The Ultimate Enemy" by Danny's evil future self when he taunts them for this.
• The Donald Duck cartoon "Fire Chief" provides the page image. Here he plays the chief of the local fire department, who berates his nephews for their incompetence, yet accidentally sets his own firehouse on fire and burns it to the ground when he hooks up the hose to the fire truck's gas tank.
• Harley Quinn: Harley was a trained psychologist and expertly diagnosed many of the Arkham inmates' mental problems, but it takes her a good long while to acknowledge and confront the serious mental problems she herself has.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "On Your Marks," the Cutie Mark Crusaders have finally achieved their goal of getting their cutie marks some time ago. The only problem is, they have to ask themselves "now what are we going to do?" While Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo take up new hobbies, Apple Bloom is left pondering the future, and how to go about their special skill of helping other ponies discover their true talents. Apple Bloom feels especially down when she realizes that, despite her talent being helping others with their unique abilities and passions, she can't seem to find one of her own.
• The Simpsons:
• In "Bart's Girlfriend", Reverend Lovejoy's daughter Jessica is a bratty, manipulative hellion who steals from the church collection plate. Near the end of the episode, Jessica keeps mentioning things she did ("Remember the glee club brawl?!") in a baldly obvious attempt to win her father's attention, as he tries to ignore her by covering his ears and singing "Bringing In the Sheaves" loudly. Mrs. Lovejoy is characterized throughout the series as an excessive busybody and Moral Guardian who frequently justifies her pushiness and interfering in the affairs of others by protesting "Won't someone please Think of the Children!?"; while she seems excessively concerned with how other people are raising their children, she's apparently not that good at raising her own...
• In "Children of a Lesser Clod", Homer becomes a Friend to All Children after he spends a night watching over Flanders's kids and sets up his own daycare center as a result. He then proceeds to neglect his own kids, forces them out of their bedrooms, and makes them work long hours for the benefit of both him and his daycare. Bart and Lisa eventually retaliate by showing all the parents of Springfield just how unreliable and abusive he can really be.
• Steven Universe: Steven is very good at getting others to open up and helping them through whatever emotional problems are plaguing them. However, he frequently does this at the expense of dealing with his own personal issues until they overwhelm him. "What's Your Problem?" focuses on Amethyst's acknowledgement of the issue. She spends the episode trying to get Steven to have fun and open up about how he feels about a recent, very personal, still-fresh reveal, even as Steven himself is focused on finding and helping the runaway Ruby. When Steven tries to get Amethyst to talk, Amethyst makes it very clear that she has no intention of dumping "another thousand-year-old complex" onto him and making him feel responsible for something he's under no obligation to deal with. Steven Universe: Future focues on Steven, no longer having anyone who needs his help following the end of the original series, slowly starting to buckle under the weight of all his unresolved issues and bottled up trauma.

The earliest recording of this proverb is in John Heywood's 1546 book of proverbs.A similar sentiment is found in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621: "Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself".

Other variants include "the shoemaker's son always goes barefoot" and "the cobbler's children go barefoot." Children or child is sometimes replaced with the more colloquial kids.

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