SFW?
I am so glad I had this book, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have had a bit of structure to the ensuing conversation. My mother sort of had a sex talk with me, but I remember shouting her down and trying not to listen as she extolled on the process of menstruation. This left me with trying to rectify my values with the cliche of the sex talk with my seven-year-old, as well as actually trying to answer his question, which was, to wit, “If the baby is inside the mother, how the hell does it get out?“*
Okay, you try to accurately explain a vagina to a seven-year-old. The book describes it as a “little hole” between the mother’s legs which is, as we all know, about 2% of the truth. A vagina, I explained to Ethan, is more like a tunnel that goes inside a woman’s body and leads to the womb. But that came later.**
Again, I am glad I had this book in front of me or this conversation would have been circular and confusing for Ethan. When a man loves a woman, well, I guess they don’t actually have to be in love, or even a man and a woman, because they could really be a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, but I guess for the sake of baby-making it would have to be a man and a woman, or a woman and a lab tech. Or, oh fuck it.
The book frames the sexual relationship as one of marriage between a couple that does love each other very much, and does so in a way that is conversational, friendly, funny, and completely non-threatening for the younger crowd. It also acknowledges that at some point the 4-8 crowd will also be interested in and will probably have sex too someday. After dispelling some myths about the birthing process,
Dad found me at the saloon!
the book begins by explaining how the sexes are different in bodily structure and what role each of these differing body parts play in the reproductive process.
This is framed in a way that most children realize they are different from other children: in the bath tub. Past a certain age, we call this foreplay.
At a certain point in the book I realize that the pages have been turned so much that they’re ready to fall out, and I realize that Ethan must have been reading this book on the sly. Something about this is endearing to me, this search for information about the adult body that is so compelling, yet so foreign. I remember sneaking my folks’ Stephen King books and my sister’s Harlequin romance novels off the shelves so I could read the sex scenes. The need to understand sex was something I couldn’t tell another soul, especially not my parents. In a few years I would read an SE Hinton book in the backseat of my mother’s car, come to a word I didn’t understand, and ask my mom what the word “horny” meant. This would not go over well.
But despite the book binding rotting off the edge of the pages, Ethan feigned that he’d never had access to this information before. As I matter-of-factly read the book to him, pausing to fill in the blanks, he squirmed and giggled, covered his face and averted his eyes. When the book described “making love,” a term I haven’t heard in earnestness since, well, never, I asked Ethan, “Have you ever heard the word sex?” He nodded. “Making love is also known as having sex.”
Ethan paused. His eyebrows furrowed. A little lightbulb flipped on and his jaw went slack.
I know that by now he’s had plenty of exposure to sex, from television, movies and other media to conversations overheard at home and at school. This mere explanation had drawn a connection for him that was, as far as I would witness, pretty profound. This “making love” crap didn’t carry the weight of “having sex,” apparently a more adult subject that Ethan knew to take seriously. With this revelation, the weirder parts of this book appeared to make sense to him and his embarrassment, for the most part, vanished. We read about the insemination process, when the egg and sperm meet, and how the resulting combination may eventually make a baby.
“Here,” I told him, “is where we get to your question.”
The rest of the book details fetal growth, what it feels like for a mother when she is pregnant, and eventually, the birth itself. Again, I can’t stress enough that despite the book’s problematic points (written in the late 70s, I’m sure a diligent feminist or biologist could tear this section of book apart, but that’s not the goal here) it presents all of these things in a positive way that an engaged child can understand. It dispels myths about sex and childbirth, and stresses the importance of using proper, respectful terminology for the body and its parts, acknowledges that humans are sexual creatures without moralizing or predetermining the parents’ sexual values.
Books like this are catalysts for valuable and necessary conversations between children and their guardians, and the beginning of comprehensive sex education. If you have kids of the reading age, I encourage you to pick up something similar and leave it around the house for your children to find. They will ask you about it, and a conversation about sex initiated by the child is one of great communicative potential. When they do ask you for this information, do not brush off the opportunity to communicate your values of health and safety.
In the end, I asked Ethan if he had any questions about sex or birth, he said no. I told him that I was very glad that he asked me to read this book with him and that if he had any questions I would do my best to answer them, or at least find him some resources if he was curious. Later, we talked about what it was like when I was pregnant and his experience in the hospital after he was born. We discussed the finer points of umbilical cords and belly buttons, and where exactly in my body the womb (“pronounced: ‘woom’”) was located.
“So the baby isn’t in the mother’s belly or tummy, it’s in her womb. And remember, the womb is connected to the vagina.”
“Ooooooooh.”
Knowing that Ethan got more information than he was really asking for, I feel good knowing that he gets the big picture. The rest of the details can be satisfied later.
__________
* When I told my mother about this, she said, “Thank God you didn’t tell E what your father told me to tell your oldest sister.” When she was pregnant with my second sister, the oldest asked the very same question. Dad told mom to tell my sister that the baby came out of the mother’s mouth.
** No pun intended.
You survived the first round!
Right on. I’m sure you’ve set E on the right path toward understanding the body and the basic technical aspects of sex. Now, sexuality…
;)
Sounds like a good talk– glad it went so well.
Sounds like a good talk.
I’m (constantly) making a conscious effort to talk about sex with/around my daughters (7 & 4). My mother gave me a pamphlet that looked twenty years old in 77 and told me to ask if I had questions. I had a million, but I wasn’t going to ask her, who was so obviously awkward with the subject. So I probably go to far when I let them hand me the tampon and chat with them while I insert it, but I don’t want sex or drugs or whatever to be big off-limits areas.
My goal is to treat sex like just another bodily function, no weirder than eating, no less appropriate than bathing. And boy, is it hard.
I’m not sure if you’re interested, because it seems like that book is doing a great job, but there is another wonderful book for little kids called “Mommy Laid an Egg”.
It’s been a loooong time since I’ve read it, but I remember liking it very much, and I know that one of my co-workers recommended it to parents all the time as a good primer for little kids.
One thing I remember from that book is that (IIRC) it didn’t really get into when sexual activity was appropriate, in terms of age. It might be worth mentioning to the kid that “this is all very interesting, but you’re a long way from needing to worry about it as it applies to you”.
No more family secrets!
You did a wonderful job with E and the way you shared on this blog was great! Maybe you can hire out to do that with other seven year olds!
Oh god, that talk. My eldest was so shy that when I tried to talk to her about it she literally covered her ears and went, “la la la la I can’t hear you!”
Thus ended her formal sex education.
The youngest is so different. She came out of the bathroom the other day in bra & panties, thrilled-thrilled!–at the new presence of underarm hair and disappointed that she didn’t yet have any on her privates.
She already knows about menstruation and puberty, but we haven’t yet gotten into the whole penis/vagina thing yet. I think I’m shy cuz she accidentally got porn-bombed a few months ago while net surfing, and that was such a trauma I hate to revisit it by talking about actual sex.
I did tell her, though, that the porn she saw was not real sex, that it makes real sex look ugly and impossible, and that real sex is a lot of fun. She’s great–she nods her head and goes, “oh, ok.”
The oldest would have been running down the street, screaming.
I’m taking notes, b/c I may already be behind. My son is 8. Did y’all wait til they asked y’all or did y’all bring up the subject?
Oh, Lord!
elle, my point was that every kid is different. The oldest wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening (she hid her menstruation from me for months, even denied it) but the youngest thinks it really, really cool. So Lauren’s 8 y/o might be ready, but your 8 y/o might not be. I’ve got to get a hold of this book for my 10 year old.
Lauren, thanks so much for sharing this. When you do more than hand a kid a book, but actually share it with him or her, you can do so much good. Ethan is blessed.
I had that book, too! It’s great, and cartoon mom and dad were so ugly and resembled my own parents so much that as a chastity-promoting tool it was far more effective than the True Love Waits program my mom sent me to when I was twelve. I finished “Where do I come from?” and didn’t think about sex until after the abstinence program, when I switched to “I can;t wait to get me some of that.”
“In a few years I would read an SE Hinton book in the backseat of my mother’s car, come to a word I didn’t understand, and ask my mom what the word “horny” meant. This would not go over well.”
I am bookmarking your blog based on those two sentences alone. Fabulous (tho I realize not for you at that point in time!). You have a way with words and I look forward to having time to read more…
With my oldest, it was me getting knocked up that started the sex talk. She was four. We mostly leaned on “What’s the Big Secret?” by the guy who does the “Arthur” books. I love it. It’s very straightforward and talks about gender differences, puberty, masturbation/touching, and sexual reproduction.
But I am super thrilled to learn about the Peter Mayle. He’s one of my guilty beachread-type pleasures.
My mom drew a picture of a uterus/fallopian tubes that looked depressingly like a cow, head on. Moo.
I still can’t believe my friend let her son walk away thinking her baby was going to come out her butt. The conversation was spurred when he asked when the neighbor’s baby girl was going to grow her penis. If they are old enough to ask, they are old enough to get correct answers.
“Where did I come from?” was totally my favorite book when I was four. A lot of people I’ve spoken with are horrified by this because apparently only horrible parents let their four year olds know about sex. To me it’s much better that way, because children aren’t interested in /having/ sex, so they may as well learn about it before they are old enough to be embarrassed by it. Makes the job that much easier.
Eeeeee, my parents had that book when I was a kid. Knowing that I used to sneak into her study and read her forbidden grownup books, my mom hid it in her bookshelf low enough for me to find. Though I’d wiped my fingerprints off it and the shelf and brushed my tracks out of the carpet, I think they knew when I’d read it.
It was only years later, when I mentioned it, that she raised an eyebrow and asked me if I really thought she owned it for herself. I guess some parents know when a child’s ready, and what delivery method’ll work; in my family’s case, enabling of, uh, burglary.
Still, it would’ve done me a lot more good if my folks had sat me down and talked to me about it. Sounds like you did a helluva job.
“In a few years I would read an SE Hinton book in the backseat of my mother’s car, come to a word I didn’t understand, and ask my mom what the word “horny” meant. This would not go over well.”
One of my positive memories of my mother: when I was in fifth grade, I picked up a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X that was lying around the house, started to read it, and asked my mother what the word “pimp” meant. She told me, in a very straightforward way.
“It’s very straightforward and talks about gender differences, puberty, masturbation/touching, and sexual reproduction.”
Actually, I learned the meaning of the word “masturbation” in junior high school, by reading books by Freudian psychologists. Not really an ideal context.
Wow. As a child, I read everything I could get my hands on. My reading skills were waaay above grade level. Boy, I wish my parents had left out a sex-education book before they left Stephen King’s Misery out. *shiver* As for the official talk, my school system gave it in the fifth grade, two years before my parents thought to ask what I knew. Moral of the story: Make sure your kids are comfortable enough to ask you anything. Pay attention to your child’s reading comprehension level. And leave these books lying around.
Our official talk in the fifth grade (girls separated from boys) was heavy on “you’re going to be menstruating soon,” with a little anatomy. We had a few more years of sex education, presented in a fairly boring format and mostly consisting of stuff my mother had already told me, in junior high, but didn’t learn anything about birth control until tenth grade. Of course, my mother had both left a copy of “Our Bodies, Our Selves” (among other books) on a shelf where I could readily find it and talked about birth control with me directly, so I did know something bout birth control by that time.
The one glaring deficiency in my sex education, though, was that I knew everything about birth control except where the heck to get hold of it on short notice. Since this was pre-AIDS, condoms weren’t available in every supermarket. The one time I tried to look for my local Planned Parenthood, itwound up being a really long bike ride to discover I’d gotten the location completely wrong. And routine ob/gyn appointments at the college health center did not have a super fast turnaround time.
hah, that reminds me of the time i had heard someone say the word “prick” and asked my grandmother what it meant. of course she told me, in that matter of fact way she always says everything. i always like those stories, everybody has one!
ill have to say that i completly dont remember any sex education by my grandparents or mom other than her telling me how to use a tampon (in her weird ex bf’s apartment no less). i think i did what alot of people here seemed to and just read alot of books. and a period talk at school. my science teacher once told us that when a baby is born breech they shove it back in and turn it around…which…isnt…possible.
My mum had the book AND the video for my elder sister, as she was more of a visual learner. I was very bookish, and read EXTREMELY early. I polished off the book early, then went in search of reference material.
My mum tells me that I watched the vid very early and got a little confused. The woman in the vid/book looks a LOT like my mum… but the guy looks nothing like my dad :(
Hexy—-Well at least he was a real person and not just in a test tube!
haha so i kinda had a fucked up sex-ed… i think when i was around 4-5 i asked my parents the “where do babies come from” question, and they said something about connecting “private parts”, and i was like “so they touch penises!!?”, and my dad was like “well sort of”, so thought girls had penises for at least a couple years after that hahaha… dont remember when i learned the truth. also after i learned about sex in like 5th grade, i couldn’t really understand it, i wondered why anybody would want to have sex because it didn’t sound fun ( i hadn’t discovered jerking off yet). i remember asking the professor how long it would take to ejaculate, because i was thinking to myself if i have to wait around for an hour with my penis just chilling in this vagina i never want to have kids haha.
This brings back memories. I remember being told that babies grew in their mummy’s tummies, and then thingking “but it’s full of acid! How does that even work?”
Actually, that’s not entirely inaccurate. For certain breech positions, doctors will do an internal podalic version, where they reach in wrist-deep, push the kid back to make a little room, and try to manipulate it into a feet-first presentation with one hand on the outside and one on the inside. But I think it’s less common these days than external version.
(cue star: “The more… you… know!”)
As for my sex education, I was sat down around age five or six with a disturbingly accurate pop-up book about the human body and how it produces a baby. I will never forget the little tab you pull to make the sperm fertilize the egg, the little wheel you turn to make the fetus develop, and the huge pop-up of the human pelvis illustrated in graphic detail.
Of course, the actual “sex” part of the “sex ed,” from my very Catholic mother, was a rather abbreviated, “Don’t have sex before you’re married, but if you do, here’s how to not get pregnant or catch a disease.” We discussed the personal and emotional implications of sex when I was a little bit older.
I never really got a formal sex talk from my parents, so I just picked up bits and pieces of information, which doesn’t exactly lead to the best knowledge base about sex. I was convinced that a girl could get pregnant at any time if you stuck something in her pee hole and it touched a button that made an egg pop out. I kid you not. I was really afraid of falling on something that would “get me pregnant.” When I eventually expressed this fear to a friend she explained to me that that was impossible and proceeded to tell me how you could get pregnant. When I have kids I definitely won’t leave them guessing so that their 10 year old friend has to give them the sex talk!