Executive producers Dan O'Shannon & Bill Wrubel wrote the episode, and Adam Shankman directed it.

"Our Children, Ourselves" received generally positive reviews from television critics with many praising the "twist ending" to Mitchell and Cameron's storyline.

[2] At the Dunphy house, Phil (Ty Burrell) and Claire (Julie Bowen) become worried that Alex (Ariel Winter) is studying too much.

After waking her up, Phil tells her that Alex still had one of the highest grades in the class, and dumb parents do not have kids that smart.

The couple decides to leave in a cab, as Gloria comes down to apologize they give her a copy of Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" that they had signed by the author specially for her, so she convinces them to stay by telling them that Jay's "mind is going away".

[4] Rajskub later said in an interview on Lopez Tonight that she had gone through the same experience: "I had this guy, I think I was in 7th or 8th grade... we had this make out session [...] he pulled away abruptly and I never saw him again.

[1] When the episode aired, the airtime was pushed 20 minutes later than its usual time slot due to Barack Obama's speech about the 2011 Tucson shooting.

[1][8] In its original American broadcast, "Our Children, Ourselves" was seen by an estimated 11.12 million households and received a 4.2 rating/10% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

[9][10] Despite this, the episode became the second highest-rated ABC show after Grey's Anatomy and the finished seventh in the ratings the week it premiered.

TV Squad writer Joel Keller gave the episode a positive review, writing that it had "funny moments", but pointed out that "all of them left me wanting some more information to round things out.

[13] Rachael Maddux of New York praised the episode for letting the characters "out of their primly landscaped domiciles to interact with the other batty folks of the world".

[16] Entertainment Weekly writer Lesley Savage commented that while the episode wasn't a good follow up to "Slow Down Your Neighbors", the ending to the Pritchett-Tucker storyline was "pretty darn funny, and possibly a little un-PC".