Reason #1,324,789 of why I love this show.
This was a casual side conversation between Bashir and Sisko about a fellow crew member, completely unrelated to the episode’s plot, and its just so sweet.
It’s nice to know that if you’re a pregnant father-to-be on DS9, your buddies Julian and Miles will build you a hatchling pond, buy you baby clothes, and throw you a shower eagerly attended by the station’s commanding officer (who was practically beaming with joy when he found out that you were expecting).
How wonderful.
This is so much more, though. This is such a massive subversion of 90s toxic masculinity.
A male character is producing offspring, and two male characters are giving him a baby shower, which at the time (and still is) the dominant joke for male characters is how to get out of attending a baby shower.
Add to that Sisko is a absolutely giddy at the thought of new babies, during a time when black men were portrayed at the peak of the toxic masculinity charts, and were usually stereotyped as absent fathers.
The fact that Sisko is a black single father- a very involved, very supportive, very *present* black single father, was a *really big deal*- the writers knew this and were very thoughtful and deliberate with how they approached it. And it’s beautiful.
Sisko is rarely a perfect father, but he’s always a good one.