Marlon Brando, who played Stanley in the definitive movie adaptation of the play A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), was shown this episode by Edward Norton while filming The Score (2001). According to Norton, Brando loved it.
Matt Groening has listed this episode as one of his own favorites, calling the subplot "Maggie's finest moment".
The scene in which Homer, Bart and Lisa arrive in the daycare and are surrounded by babies staring at them, is based on a scene in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Hitchcock usually made a small cameo in each of his films, and his cameo in The Birds consisted of him walking past with two dogs. When Homer and the kids leave the daycare, a man looking just like Hitchcock walks past with two dogs.
Mrs. Sinclair is reading "The Fountainhead Diet," a reference to Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead. A poster in the daycare center reads "A is A," which is the title of the last section of Atlas Shrugged. Another poster, "Helping is Futile," crudely reflects her rejection of altruism.