I have written before that I have five children. I may not have made it clear that I had them in eight and half years. I was always pregnant. Surprisingly, in that time none of my children ever asked where babies come from. As a child, I would have wanted to know. In fact, I asked my mother at age six.
Actually, I had picked up on conversation on the sitcom One Day at a Time about artificial insemination and asked my mother what it meant. Without so much as a change in respiration, she took me into her room and with paper and pencil drew diagrams of natural insemination. I didn't asked at the time how the sperm and egg happen to be in the same area, and she didn't tell me until I asked a few years later.
My fourth child and only son had his own ideas about how he came to be in our family. One night while cuddling before bedtime, he told me that he had always wanted a mom like me. "Isn't it great that I am your mom," I asked. To this he responded, "No, no, no. It's not like that. What happened was, I was flying around in my spaceship. You were asleep with your mouth open. I flew in and went into your tummy where I became a baby boy." He had it all figured out at age four.
My mother's approach to teaching us about the facts of life was that if my brother or I could formulate a question, we needed a satisfactory response. She did not want us to seek our answers on the school yard. We were also strictly forbidden to dispense our knowledge to our peers. I found myself in an uncomfortable position one day in the swimming pool at day camp when a girl my age asked me what I knew about where babies come from. I refused and told her to ask her own mother.
So I was ready from the time my children were quite young to give THE TALK in the same straight forward, age-appropriate way my mother had. But by the time my oldest was ten, none had asked any questions. Finally, I took my oldest on a walk in order to bring up the subject. I knew we needed to have the talk before puberty came a-calling. She had a basic nderstanding of the process from a book I forgotten we even had called What to Expect When Mommy's Having a Baby by Heidi Murkoff (of the What to Expect series for expectant mothers and fathers). It used a puzzle analogy for the mechanics of basic human reproduction. We expanded on that a bit, giving proper names for all of the parts involved, discussed the changes that would be taking place in puberty and why, and finished with a discussion of various moral implications. She was satisfied if a little mortified with the talk. We revisit the topic regularly as her reading and movie viewing become a little more mature to make sure she stays on guard.
One night at the dinner table near the end of sixth grade, she announced that her religion teacher would be giving the class a lesson in basic human reproduction the near future. When asked why the science teacher, a young, unmarried man, wouldn't be giving the talk, the religion teacher, a mother, grandmother, and wife of a member of the permanent diaconate, said, "Well, he is young and inexperienced, and I have been doing it for years." We are still laughing.
So I had one talk behind me and four more to go when my second child, then age nine, asked me if we could have some alone time to talk. When one has lots of kids, one has to schedule such things. "Sure," I said. "How about tonight?"
When the others were in bed, she came to my room, and after some hemming and hawing said, "I was wondering where babies come from." I began as my mother had begn with a description of the internal workings. She wasn't satisfied. "So does this just happen when you get married?" So explained the mechanics to her. She continued ot ask for more and more details, and when she finally understood, she screwed her face up in disgust and said, "You mean... you've... done... THAT?!"
"Well, yes, honey, we have five children."
She was still not completely satisfied. She wanted to know, "When? Where? How do you know when to do it? Where was I when you were doing it?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, " I told her. "I will gladly answer any questions you have about the biology, mechanics, and morality of sex, but private matters are private and not open for discussion."
I told my mother about giving the talk with my second daughter, and she laughed. She told me that her mother, my sweet, little Granny, mother of eight, who wore a scapular and prayed the Rosary and Magnificat in Latin daily, had the same no nonsense approach to teaching the facts of life. My mother was fifth in the birth order and was as inquistive as her daughter would prove to be. She was also six or so when she sought answers to the burning questions surrounding the origins of babies one Saturday evening. The next morning at Mass as she sat with her family behind the Kleinschrodt family with all of their seven children, she recalls that ALL she could think about was that Mr. and Mrs. Kleinscrodt had done that SEVEN times. It never occurred to her at the time that her parents had done it even more since her parents had eight children plus numerous miscarriages.
We don't like to think of parents in such ways.
My mother and father still laugh about my second daughter's inquiry. Mom told me it has become a something of a private running joke and come-on. "Hey, do you do that?"
Eeeeewwwwww!
