Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Where DON'T Babies Come From?

Okay, this is something that popped into my head recently. I don't even know if I'll ultimately end up using it, but whether I go ahead with the fic or not, the question is lodged in my head now, and I don't know where else to go with this sort of thing. I tried GOOGLE, but got nothing, and anyway, maybe I or even someone else could use this scene in any other fic down the road...

Anyway, my question is this:

What are some interesting theories that children have on where babies come from? Or are todays tots too educated?

Well, there's still the old stories. The stork, found in a cabbage patch (yes, the story existed long before the dolls did).

Boys are found in cabbage patches, girls are found in roses.
There's the stork. There's the one where you go to the hospital and choose which one you want.

There's mommy swallowed a watermelon seed (that explains the tummy).

Generally, kids repeat whatever Granma says, but based on my own kid - a bright kid knows babies grow inside mommies and come out when they're ready. But how mommy gets pregnant may be a bit of a mystery.

I read a story once where a girl of about 12 or so thought she could get pregnant by sitting on a toilet after a man peed on it. Oh and of course some kids think you could get pregnant just by kissing.

My sisters and I once thought hot-tubbing resulted in children--although we never had a hot tub.

And one of my friend's mothers was told that HER parents "went for a drive," and then they got her.

Wait! Hold on! You're telling me the stork story isn't true?

Next you're going to be telling me there's no such thing as Santa Clause.

ML

My mom and dad got me at K-Mart. My older sister they got at Sears. Guess they had a bit more money to spend on the first child.

ETA: When we were bad, my dad would always threaten to return us.

Sara

My parents used to tell us we were dropped by the eagles, and my sister likes to say that my other sister was dropped by the vultures.

As a slightly side note, when my mom was pregnant with my younger sister, my parents kept telling my older sister that she was getting, "a new baby sister." When the nurse asked my older sister how she liked her new baby sister, she replied, "fine... now we can get rid of Anna." I'm loved, can you tell?

~Anna

My mom was a midwife, so when I was a kid, I knew WAY too much about where babies came from! She used to have books with vivid graphics lying around and was not shy about sharing the details. I used to wish that I could believe in the stork!!!

Well, we had to watch an eductional movie in fourth grade where a woman givs birth, shown with all the gorey details. (Okay, it was cut short a bit, but that was about all the editing it got.)

I remember going home, still shell-shocked, and announcing that I was *never* going to have a baby.

But I knew before that that babies are growing in the mummy's tummy and that, somehow, they get out when they're ready since I have a brother four years my junior.

One story not mentioned before is the one about flowers and bees. (Never heard that one, but many references to it.)

Oh, and somewhere I heard the "God gives children to loving parents" part.

You guys wouldn't believe the recent conversation that Olympe and I had about this subject. Most of was... well, I'm a nurse and I think it was a little too medically graphic to put on the PG side of things...

But I've got to say that Olympe told me about a myth I'd never heard that says CocaCola prevents pregnancy (and I don't mean drinking it). That one had me lying in the floor laughing.


Oh, my gadfries... You're kidding. It might have been a little less traumatic to see puppies being born....


I think I always knew about babies being in a mommy's tummy, too. (I just didn't know how they got there.) But then I was always curious about all things about the human body.


The birds and the bees - or the flowers and the bees - speaks of pollination of flowers by bees (and birds). Thus it has become a more general term for procreation.

I remember hearing people mention 'The Pumpkin Patch'.

When I first became a nurse (27 years ago), it was a different time. At that time (and again later), I worked in obstetrics. I had one girl tell me, "I still don't understand how I could be having a baby. I didn't eat any watermelon. I hate watermelon." She truly did not understand what she had done that caused her pregnancy until I patiently explained it to her. She was in shock. That's just one of the things that I heard...

Here's one I just dreamed up: Superman brings babies to folks.

When I think of the Stork bring the babies I always envision the opening scene in the Disney movie Dumbo and the Storks bring all the babies to their mothers

I had a friend once go over the gorey details about your mother and father really loving each other needless to say we really didn't want to think about that! I think my other friend said 'don't even say that!'

No, I was not kidding about the film. But I guess I got over it...

Nancy, don't remind me of Coca Cola! Don't, don't , don't!

Here is the link to where I found all those myths:
myths about birth control
Enjoy!

not exactly 'where do come from', but a variation - the old changeling swap thing

c.

The movie? What movie? Oh, the educational movie.

Hey, CC, I can't say that I've ever heard of the changeling swap thing. Of what do you speak?

I told my oldest, almost 3, that she picked out her brother at the hospital. She told me about 6 months later that she picked out the wrong baby, we needed to take him back. LOL

I wouldn't completely dismiss the idea. Coca Cola is acid and the sperm can't move when the surrounding is too acidic. That doesn't mean that I'd try that method, at least not if I was really serious with not wanting to get pregnant.

I also love the story the mother come up with in Now and Then, about the watering hose and the flower garden.

How about the related film shown in high-school? That's when the captain of the football team faints and all the girls are laughing at the guys.

FOURTH GRADE?!?

I remember seeing a video about puberty in FIFTH grade, but one where a woman gives birth?!? No way. My parents never would've signed the permission form when I was nine years old.

We didn't even get into actual sex ed classes until sixth grade, and they were given every year, but I only had my parents sign the permission form for the one in sixth grade, and then I took an alternate assignment in seventh and eighth.

Yes, it was in fourth grade, my last year on primary school. Guess that's why I was so shocked afterwards. It lasted for several years (which is good for preventing teenage pregnancies). By now, I have a three-year-old daughter, so, obviously, the shock didn't last forever.

This event was sort of the last part of our first (very moderate) sex ed class. We had another one in sixth grade, which was more interesting, yet still moderate. Since I secretly started reading a certain magazine of my parents' around fourth grade (which was definitely nfic and very enlightening), I was way ahead of my class mates. Much to my poor teacher's chagrin.

The Miracle of Life? We watched that movie in the NINTH grade, and the girl in the row next to me threw up.

Meanwhile, I had 19 years of Catholic schooling (grade school, high school and college!), and I think we had one sex ed class in the fifth grade. It consisted of us reading out loud Family Life textbooks in class. Fat lot of help that did me LOL! We finally had a real biology class later on, and I said, "Ahhhh, THAT'S what really happens."

JD

I honestly don't remember the title any more. I had other things on my mind than that stupid title...

Heh. Me, I pretty much ignored sex ed classes in middle school, and then near the end of high school I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction. Trust me, the Nfic there leaves NOTHING to the imagination--and sometimes now, I wish it had.

I haven't read through that yet, but you'll probably find some interesting theories here: http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/sex/ and particularly http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/sex/getting_pregnant/

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Two years ago when my son was ten he brought up the subject of where babies came from. So, after a few moments of sheer panic, I sat him down and told him the basics.

He looked at me for a few seconds in consideration and then asked for some clarification on just where things were supposed to go. "Part of the daddy goes inside the mommy?"

"That's right," I told him.

"This part?" he asked, gesturing at the part in question.

"Yes."

His brow furrowed and then he looked at me like I had lost my mind. He spread his hands in bewilderment and plaintively asked, "But how?!?"

There was only one way to answer that: "Ask me again when you're older."

He still hasn't asked - thank goodness.

Ah, man, Sue! Gah! I was on the phone talking to Dell customer service and they put me on hold while they checked something for me. I made the mistake of deciding to read your comments here. I wanted to die laughing - of course, right about the time the rep came back on the phone.

I had to clap my hand over my mouth really fast and just mumble yes or no until I recovered.

Oh, my. That was too funny! Thanks for the laugh... (hubby laughed too).

When I was born, my older (by 6 years) sister wanted to feed me to the dog because she wasn't too thrilled with the new baby. I guess this carried over into adulthood because when my daughter was born, she told her that I was found behind a trash dumpster!

Explaining where babies come from is easy if you've had them. I have two boys that are adopted... Now that's going to be a doozy!

SQD (who, despite what her sister says, does not smell like garbage)

This is true, but there would still be plenty of those critters that had had time to reach their intended target before the use of the CocaCola.


Okay, how old were you in fourth grade especially since that was your last year of primary school. I wonder if that corresponds to 4th grade in the States (or elsewhere). In the States, that would mean a child of 9 or 10. The last year of primary school in the States is the 5th of 6th grade. Some consider 6th grade to be the first year of middle school - some consider it to be the last year of primary school.

Wow, things certainly have changed a lot. When I was in 5th grade, we had a class where they told us about periods. Period - that was it. The boys always got herded off and wondered what the hoopla was all about. I don’t think I saw films of babies being born until I was in college. In high school, we had ‘health’ classes that told us about sperm from the male meeting up with ova from the female, but for the life of me, I don’t think they told us much about how they got there… I was always very interested in things about the human body, and I understood how babies got out and I knew all about the male and female body, but I didn’t truly understand the way things *really* happened until I read a somewhat graphic book. (‘Jaws’ to be exact. Boy was that an eye-opener. And what a book to learn that in… Sharks on one page and sex on the next… Let’s just saw the movie is not as graphic.)

Oh, Anna, that site is great. If you guys want a good laugh take a look. Here’s one little tidbit from there that had me laughing out loud: When I was little, I misunderstood the word 'testicles' for 'tonsils'. So, ever since my sex ed class in grade four, I would stare in shock at anybody that claimed that they had their tonsils removed.


My poor mom was always very honest with me, but she just couldn’t bring herself to tell me how that happened.

Bet he’s already found out.

My parents had a policy of "if you're old enough to ask, you're old enough to know." So I got the straight answer pretty early.

But Mom did joke about Macy's and stuff.

And Grandma was taught that women became pregnant from "catching a draft" (wind gust).

Don't you mean FoLCs?

From what I can gather from her profile, Olympe is from Germany. Europeans don't tend to be so uptight about sex, so I don't think it's that surprising, although I'm not sure how well nine or ten year olds would understand a movie like that.

FoLCs it is then...


Well, yes, I know where Olympe is from, but when I say things have changed, I meant more from an age difference. I know for a fact that I'm old enough to be Olympe's mother. (She teases me about that fact.) And I have no idea what's done in the States these days. So, I know we've heard from DS Dragon (I'm also old enough to be her mom). So how about some of you younger folks from the States? What goes on in those sex-ed classes these days? (I suppose I should tell you that it's been 25+ years since I graduated from high school.)

Think this had its origins in European folklore, but it could be universal. The belief was that trolls, leprechauns, elves or faeries might possibly swap babies or just leave a baby with a family. The reasoning was used to explain any child who was quite different from its parents, etc

Just thought - maybe the baby at the end of the series was a changeling

c.

That's pretty much what went on in my school days too, Nancy--except, I was determined NOT to be "interested" until I got married (which I haven't yet, so that plan's kind of moot)--and I only graduated from high school 5½ years ago.

Besides, those critters won't have to move that far any more - they're already boosted by Coca Cola...

In Germany, children usually start school at the age of six, so in fourth grade they're nine to ten years old.

Well, it depends on the federal state whether primary school ends with the fourth or sixth grade. And the system of secondary schools - it's hopelessly complicated. Depending on the state, there are two to five different types to choose from.

Good one!


Yes, I am from Germany. And the differences you mentioned are there. But my mom didn't get that sort of 'treatment'. And she really is as old as classicalla. And my grandmom (now 67) was already pregnant and still believed that children got out throught the navel... So, don't tell me about being or not being uptight.


Poor baby!

I believe the belief is mostly Irish and/or Scottish, but I could be mistaken.

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone with my post . I had the impression that some people were surprised or shocked that a video like you described would be shown to fourth graders--so I pointed out the cultural difference to explain why it's not surprising to me. In my experience most European societies just aren't as uptight about sex as much of American society is. You can see what I mean by this just be turning on your TV. Nudity, for example, is not that big a deal. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine people and the media in, say, Germany or France reacting to something like Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction like much of the American public did.

Again, I didn't mean to offend and I apologize if I did.

Well, we got our sex education at the age of around eleven - the last year at primary school. It covered absolutely everything, so far as I remember, except one thing: they didn't explain that people did it purely for pleasure. So for a couple of years, I imagined that couples only had sex when they wanted to make a baby - say, once every two years or so. How innocent was I?

Yvonne

I didn't want to give the impression that I was offended. Sorry if I - once again - put my foot in my mouth. But, as my example comparing the experiences of my mother and classicalla shows, things weren't that different back then. But, obviously, we have developed differently. I mean, when I first heard about the American "NO NIPPLES, PLEASE" policy in comics - man, did I have a good laugh. It seemed so absurd at the time. By now I know that everything you do has to be fool- and lawproof in the states. I mean, if even those "intelligent designers" managed to force schools into teaching that stuff in biology - I mean, I would have understood that sort of thing in religious education, because that is where it belongs, but in biology? Honestly!


You should have seen the headlines! As usual, BILD was right on top of it. And not only for one day, mind you. (And not only BILD, I suppose. The others just weren't sporting headlines equally big and screaming.)


Same here. But I found other sources to straighten me out.

I don't recall having any sort of special assembly in elementary school. I have visions of some movie, but I have a feeling that was a mental image from either a Judy Blume novel (possibly Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret) or some other book I've read.

My parents didn't even both sitting down and explaining it to me. My brother, some friends, and I had found my father's magazines at a very tender age (6?), and I started reading my mother's romance novels at the age of 12. That, along with the medical dictionary, and other items of my mothers found around the same time filled out my sex ed better than my parents and school ever could.

However, my mom did joke when I was a kid that she was going to put me back into her stomach so that she could keep me young.

Obviously, the magazines would cover it (sex sells, after all), but there was such a moralistic outcry in the States over the whole thing ("My God, won't someone think of the children?") and I don't think there was that same reaction in Europe. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Loved the Washington Post TV column 's recent comment on Nipplegate, btw:

On Feb. 4, it'll be Prince on CBS, on the heels of last season's Rolling Stones on ABC and, before that, Sir Paul Bad-Taste-in-Women on Fox.

Not coincidentally, these three flat-chested blasts from the past followed the historic 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, broadcast on CBS, in which congressmen were blinded, FCC commissioners plotzed and little towheaded babes were doomed to lives of crime and debauchery when they caught a glimpse of an actual female breast.

P.S. Obviously I misinterpreted your post, Olympe. Glad you weren't offended--I was seriously puzzled as to what, exactly, you might have found offensive .

I don't recall taking any type of sex ed as a kid. And I graduated within the last decade. I think I may have missed it because we moved around so much.

I’ve heard the bit about trolls stealing babies, but I thought they just kept them.


I’ve worked in obstetrics a couple of different times. There have been two or three folks over the years that were totally shocked to find out how the baby came out, too… And that’s when they were in labor. I had one lady that came in and had never been to the doctor. She had never even had a vaginal exam done by a doctor, and the concept was totally foreign to her. You should have heard the conversation that ensued when I had to convince that I had to do that to see if she was dilated or not… She couldn’t even understand the concept of that being how the baby got out, let alone a nurse doing an exam on her.


You are probably right - at least in the aspect of showing pictures etc, about it. You still won’t find topless billboards or topless ads in the US. And boy, let me tell you how shocked I was when I visited Europe as a naïve 18 year old…


Oh, my god! You mean people do that for pleasure????? I think this is still common thinking about young kids.


I’m not sure they still do this, but I might be wrong. They still airbrush them out on TV shows. I was raised with the idea that you covered those nipples at all cost - even if it meant using band-aids. (Of course, I never much listened to my mom in that regard. I think she still gets aggravated when I wear something low enough to show off my cleavage. (And as I’ve joked with Olympe, it doesn’t take anything extremely low for me to do that…)


I think that most religious folks are using the idea that both ideas should be presented - not that evolution should be presented as a hard fact. (And I think it’s been more about evolution than biology.) I think that’s where the objection lies. And some teachers have been known to tell students that their religious ideas are stupid, and they present evolution as a fact instead of the theory that it is. I think it’s all a matter of the way something is presented. When I was growing up, I was taught evolution as a theory , not as the hard and fast truth. That’s not always true now.


BILD?

I think people in the States got so upset over the Janet Jackson thing because she suggested that it was done on purpose. (Or maybe it was Justin Timberlake that suggested it, but I did hear him say later that it truly was an accident. But then who knows since one of his new songs uses outrageous language.) Of course, now the Superbowl half-time shows are on a few second delay now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild

I must admit that the moralistic outcry over Janet Jackson's 'little accident' wasn't all that loud over here. Instead, it was reported that there was such an outcry in the states.

I guess you got rid of your naïveté quickly. All this nudity, people cursing wihtout restraint (okay, you possibly didn't understand any of this ), and all the alc you could get there - even the really hard stuff.
You did know about the hard liquors, didn't you?

Well, my grandma was taken side by one of her older sisters. This sister told her then that children get out the way they got in in the first place. That did the trick for her.

LOL! Typical American! I mean, what's the big deal? Is breast-feeding in public forbidden? If not, children can get the full view that way, too. :rolleyes:

No, not really--although there ARE people who raise a stink about it over here. I'm not one of them. My philosophy? At least this type of partial nudity has a purpose, as opposed to the televisions shows and movies which just have nudity for nudity's sake.

At the time of the Janet Jackson/half-time show thing, I didn't really care (I'm not much of a sports fan anyway), but it seemed to me like it was an accident, so I thought that the whole outcry over it was just ridiculous.

The thing is, "intelligent design" really has nothing to do with religion. It's purely science -- and not just biology. When you look into it, Darwin's theory of evolution has a large number of *big* problems with it. And a lot less "proof" than most of us have been led to believe (see "Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells). Darwin thought cells were pretty basic, for instance; we're learning now how fantastically complex they are (see "Darwin\'s Black Box" by Michael Behe). ID doesn't attempt to identify the "intelligence" behind the design; it's just about teaching both sides of the issue.

I think it's a fascinating topic. Science ought to be about investigating the world and following whatever evidence you find to wherever it leads you -- without ruling anything out before you even start.

PJ

And usually it's not even partial nudity - it is none at all! The majority of nursing mothers I see in public are very discreet, using blankets, etc. I rarely actually see skin. Yet people still flip out about it. I always want to say, it's biology, people, get over it.

When I worked at JCPenney, I used to sit in the associates' lounge on my breaks and do the day's crossword puzzle in the paper. The "Dear Abby"-type column was on the same page as the puzzle, with the horoscopes and stuff, so I'd read that too.

Someone wrote in about breast feeding mothers in public, basically complaining about how "inappropriate" it is. I wrote a reply, including a couple of things I'd learned from my psychology class about the benefits of mother's milk versus formula or cow's milk.

I also said something like, "Hungry babies cry. Breast feeding saves time washing dirty bottles, which would probably be a blessing considering how many women lose sleep in the first few months of motherhood. And when the mother's out with the baby, at least if she feeds the baby, it's not screaming because it's hungry--less headache for those around the woman with the hungry baby."

I was pretty smart-alecky, come to think of it--not that I was trying to be, that is.

And yes, most of the nursing mothers I've seen have used blankets while breast feeding--to keep their babies (and/or breasts) warm, if not for modesty.

Reminds me of a Far Side cartoon. There's this scientist showing off his latest theory at a blackboard. Complex equations and such on one side, then a giant arrow to the words "And then a miracle happens" and another arrow to much simpler equations. Caption: "I think you need to expand a bit on step two..."

However much you pretend, magic and miracles aren't science. "We're like this because some unknowable superior entity wanted us to be this way" is not a scientific theory. It's not a testable hypothesis.

Evolution, on the other hand, is a testable theory. And one we've seen a lot of evidence for.

And if there are problems with Darwin's original sourcework... Well, it's not like "Origin of Species" is the bible of evolution. If we find that some of it's wrong, we can update our theories.

Freud's theories on psychology were based on instinct, guesswork, and whatever seemed to make sense to the good doctor at the time. Most of it has been discarded by the bulk of modern psychologists. But that doesn't mean we've abandoned everything that was built from his work. He gave us the basic principles of psychoanalysis and modern psychiatric treatment. We've just improved on them and adapted them as new information came in.

Science is about learning, testing, and revising.

And no, scientists aren't perfect. They make mistakes. Some of them do bad things for selfish reasons. Sometimes, because we don't know everything (if we did, there'd be no need for science at all), they make invalid assumptions. But when things like that are discovered, or when new information comes in that contradicts the old... we learn from that, we make the corrections, and we move on.

As for nipples and such... Every culture is different. We all have our taboos. I remember Dad remarking on a Palestinian woman who was breastfeeding her child. When she saw strangers approaching, she made haste to cover up... her face. In her culture, it was considered indecent for anyone but her husband to see her face, but seeing her bare breasts was perfectly natural.

Then again, it wasn't so long ago that seeing a woman's ankles was considered pretty racy, and no small number of young boys thought that women had some mysterious means of locomotion that didn't involve legs.

What's considered indecent changes from time to time and place to place. Here, female nipples are not for public display, but just about everything else can be (face, hair, neck, midriff, legs...). I don't know that you can really say it's good or bad or prudish or not. It's the limit our culture has set. For now.

But anyway... Getting waaaaaay off topic here.

Wonder how many kids were (or will be) told that babies come from eBay...

Thanks, Paul. I was just going to point this out.

My grandmother's first husband wrote her love letter in which he told her she didn't know it but that he had seen her ankles....

Ebay indeed... What a riot.

My pleasure, C_A.

I firmly believe in every person's right to their own beliefs. There are plenty of respectable scientists who are people of faith. But faith, by its very nature, is not science.

BTW, love the avatar.

Back to the subject at hand... Maybe it's not eBay. Maybe it's eBaby...

Actually, that reminds me of something else. A bit from an ep of " Perfect Strangers ."

Balky comes home from shopping, all excited about his new discovery. Went something like this...

"First I found drink powder. You just add water, and you get a fruit drink! Then I found soap powder. You just add water, and you get soap! But, today... Oh, cousin... I found the most amazing thing!"

*Balky holds up a bottle of baby powder*

"I love this country!!"

Is this place to mention virgin births?

c.

Why not?


Good one! Should've though of it before I told my daughter about the real thing. She just happened to notice the 'exit' while bathing. As the curiousity of a three year old goes, she had to ask, "What's it good for?"

"It's where your babies will come out."

"My babies?" I nodded. "Now?"

Seeing that she was obviously shocked, I reassured her, "No, not now. When you're all grown up." Muttering under my breath, I added, "At least I hope so."

"Not now? Sure?"

"No, not now. Sure."

"Good!" she said and heaved a sigh of relief.
Who would have thought of having that sort of conversation that early?

You've got a lot of faith in science, Paul Not blind faith, of course, but then neither is mine.

And it's nice to say everyone can believe whatever they like, but logically speaking, they cannot all be right. When two people disagree, at *least* one of them is wrong (quite possibly they both are).

Science is a search for causes. But scientists are human beings, who have preconceptions and biases just like the rest of us. Someone who starts off saying "well, of course there's no God; that's ridiculous" is going to *artificially* limit his/her search to the natural, not the supernatural. "There is no God" is not a proven (or provable) statement; it's a premise. And it might or might not be true. And if the premises are false, the conclusions are very likely going to be wrong.

ID is actually *more* falsifiable than evolution. ID says, frex, "the blood clotting process involves about twenty different chemical cues all firing in a specific sequence, and if one of them is missing, it's disastrous -- either blood doesn't clot at all and all blood is lost, or it clots up all over the place, causing strokes and shutting down blood flow. Either way, you're dead. This sequence only works when *all* elements are present together, therefore it could not have been built up a piece at a time." To falsify that, just prove that it *could* build up one piece at a time.

Evolution says "the blood clotting process built up one piece at a time. We haven't any clue how it happened, really, but we're certain it did." How do you falsify that? No matter how many failed experiments you conduct, the hard-core neo-Darwinist can just shrug and say "well, sure, *that* way didn't work. But that just means it was a different process, one we haven't found yet. Give us more time; we'll find it."

When you look into it, the odds against evolution are staggering. Takes more faith to believe in *that* than in God, IMHO. And faith, as we all know, is not science.

PJ

Could we please stop talking about ID and evolution? I'm afraid I'll post something that will set off a flame war (this is a really, really sore point with me) and I just don't want to go there. It's a debate that can't be "won" as I've learned in the past, so there's no point in starting it. Besides, it's off topic anyway .

Back on topic...

I remember my parents telling me that I was found under a gooseberry bush. I always found this rather insulting. I hate gooseberries. Why couldn't I have been found under something nicer, like a raspberry bush?

I was the youngest child. As a result, I really didn't have a clue for the longest time where babies came from. I suspect children with younger siblings are more likely to realise that babies come from mummy's tummy. However, if you never get to see the 'watermelon belly', how are you ever supposed to guess something like that?

Yvonne, you obviously went to a more forward thinking school than I did. We didn't get any sex ed classes... at least not unless or until we chose to study biology for 'O' level, and lots of pupils didn't do that. (We'd have been somewhere between fourteen and sixteen, then.)

I remember how that particular biology lesson started. The teacher breezed in and said, "Right. We're going to start on reproduction this week. According to the syllabus, I can either teach you about the sexual reproduction of rabbits or of humans. I thought you'd be more interested in humans, so we'll be studying that. However, just so you know, the only real difference is that rabbits ovulate as a reflex action to sex."

Even those kids who studied biology were desperately ill-informed. The attitude was that the kind of nice girls who attended the school didn't *need* sex ed. Suffice to say, the attitude was naive in the extreme. It took me months to figure out that one of my classmates didn't just have a passion for baggy clothing!

Mind you, after I figured out what was really behind said classmate's fashion choices, I realised that there was a far bigger mystery to unravel, and that was... how did girls got to meet boys in the first, since we were at an all-girls school!

Chris

Oh, the things I'm learning here today! . I want to go to a sex education class taught by you guys .

ML

Well said, Pam. My faith is also not blind.


You got that right… They are probably both wrong.

Many years ago, a brilliant scientist (in Australia, I believe) said that all stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. He was almost laughed out of the profession because it was thought that there was no way bacteria could live in the hydrochloric acid. Guess what? He was later proven right… and wrong. Many are caused by bacteria… Some are not.

Pam, everything you said was well said.


I agree. It’s a war that can’t be won. It’s akin to democrats and republicans getting together and arguing politics. I’ll say nothing more about it.

Okay, MLT. How about this: A couple of folks mentioned virgin births… Well it can happen (and I’m not talking Mary or artificial insemination). You can get pregnant without having sexual intercourse (vaginal). If a guy does his thing on your leg, on your belly, or on the floor for that matter, if you are close enough to the semen, those little fellas can SWIM!! Sometimes those little fellas can slip out in pre-ejaculate fluid, too, before the guy even does his thing…

Here’s another myth… Breastfeeding one baby prevents you getting pregnant with another. (It helps, but it won’t outright prevent it.)

<giggle>

Not quite. Some of us do not ovulate while breastfeeding.

HOWEVER. Not only is it impossible to know if you are in that group beforehand, some women who did not ovulate while nursing their first child do while nursing a later one (given that each baby has different nursing patterns, this is hardly surprising). Nonetheless, for some women, breastfeeding alone can prevent another pregnancy.

Certainly not something I would rely on if it were important not to get pregnant, though.

Yes, unfortunately some women have done this. I think it's more well known now that it won't absolutely prevent pregnancy, but it used to be common for people to think that it did.

As you said, you don't which group you will fall into.

Oh gosh. Sex ed. that was a nightmare. I moved around in schools a lot as a kid myself, so I may have just gotten lucky, but I also wound up going to a more conservative christian highschool. I think the majority of our sex ed THERE involved flower biology. I don't recall any agonizingly painful moments in highschool.

College was something else. Mandatory health class. everyone had to take it. no exceptions. Everyone had to be present for the sex ed parts. They had different sessions for guys and girls. Supposedly to make it easier for the students... EXCEPT OUR TEACHER WAS A MAN.

My friends an I were of a rather unanimous opinion on the topic (we were all VERY late bloomers.):
We don't wanna know until we get married thankyewverymuch. the boys can keep their pants on and we'll keep ours on and they're not touching us anyway. we don't wanna know! frankly we all knew it anyway we just didn't want to endure the torture.

although the teacher was an utter riot to watch. beet red through the whole thing, flat monotone, never looked up from his notes.

I still question the sanity of the administrators who required it to be a part of the curriculum. I mean really? what's more traumatic for a kid being told the mysteries of life surrounded by snnickering peers or by your parents or heck by your doctor? please I'd vote doctor any day of the week for best choice.

although I do know of one girl, poor kid, she hadn't been told ANYTHING by her parents at ALL. then one day she just starts bleeding. she was in an utter panic and my cousin (who was like 15 at the time) had to explain the whole thing, birds bees, the works.

The birds and the bees? I've been assured that the whole thing is a myth.

From what I've heard, if you stick a bird and a bee together in a cage, odds are nothing will happen. Well, I suppose there's a chance the bird will eat the bee or the bee will sting the bird or something, but that's hardly likely to get either one of them pregnant, you know?

Pretty sure there is not a single thing a bee or a bird can do -- with each other or anyone or anything else -- that could get either pregnant. Given that they both are oviparous . . .

Besides, all bees flying around who build states (like the honey bee) are usually sterile - apart from the rare (and big) queens who loose their wings after being inseminated, and the short-lived drones, so even if the bird could do something, there'd be no result...

Oh, but those birds and bees sure can cross-pollinate those flowers which in the world of flowers is sex.

German, here, too. (From the former eastern part to be accruate).
My mother read and shwoed me a book about where babies come from (hand-drawn), it was meant for children, I must have been about 5 or 6 when she showed it to me. It was nicely done and explained quite well with soem comparative example for the child mind. There where pictures of naked people in it. It just didn't explain about how the babies get into the mothers tummy, I somehow formed the opinion that the semen got into the egg via a syringe.
Later there was also a cartoon serie (French/German coproduction, I think, but primarily French). Their first episode was about the creation of a new life. They started out with two naked people kissing an embracing and then switch to the sperm racing to the egg. The series is quite well done.

Sex ed we had in class 5 or 6, I was about 11 years old and it came just in time to educate me before my first period. My parents had to sign that I now got taught about sex, in case of questions on my part.
By that time I had a vague understanding of what really went on (my libary had no idea what kind of books they had on their shelfs, scifi and fantasy isn't necessarily harmless).

How teacher was somewhat embarassed about the whole thing, so were we, much giggeling and stupid comments ensued.
I don't think they showed us a video of a birth,b ut the showed us a detailed video of the mechanics of sex and what goes where, etc.
Later we saw a cartoon film abotu sex and our right so say "no". The video had been done by pupils from Netherland, I think. It covered many thinks to, even giving yourself an orgasm. The animation was rather crud and highly repetitive, but otherwise the movie was done quite well. (We never told our other teachers that we had seen that movie already, so we got see two more times )

There were a few more movies we saw about sex and your first time and similar things, we had quite a few talks about it in different subjects, we even had a guy from an insurance over explaining the use of condoms to us, my fellow student was quite embarassed when she had to demonstrate the proper way to use a condom (on a wooden model aka something looking like the end of a broom stick).

I think we were quite well educated about sex and what to know about not getting pregnant and sexually transmitted diseases.

(As far as I remember, most of the outrage concerning Nipplegate was about the fact that the Americans where making such a huge affair about it. There was quite a bit of jesting about the whole thing.)

Ohh, yeah. How I *l o v e d* that series.

By the way, speaking of getting pregnant. Did anyone ever see the episode of the Flintstones where Fred's wife was pregnant? (Is she called Wilma as well?) This was just *h i l a r i o u s*.

I never believed in the stork and I don't remember much theories about where children came from. I knew that mommy was involved somehow. That was pretty much obvious since I had photos from my first minutes of life and my parents were on them as well. And when you are an only-child, there is not much to wonder about.

Concerning the stork, we heard something really funny in one of our lectures.

The number of babies in a country is positively correlated to the number of storks. So maybe we are all mistaken and it's the stork, anyway?

I never watched much Flintstones, but I CAN tell you that it was Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Betty and Barney Rubble.

So how do people in the polar circles get babies if there are no storks? And don't tell me about "Schneewehen". (Sorry, FoLCs, the joke gets lost in translation.)

Well, at the South Pole Penguins, almost the same color (do the scientists down there get pregnant, are there even female scientists?).

North Pole: Orcas, almost same color, too.
Never looked at it like that.

And since penguins of all kinds and sizes are scattered over whole southern hemisphere, this takes care of this. Other places:
Africa: zebras (also black'n'white)
Asia: White Tigers

and whereever, whatever...

There are female scientists in Antarctica. Several years ago, the physician there, diagnosed herself with breast cancer. If I remember correctly, she had to direct one of the other scientists in doing a biopsy. They partly had the means to treat cancer there, and chemotherapy was started, but they ended having to do a dramatic winter rescue to bring her back home (the States, I think.). Usually when they get down there, there is no coming back in the winter. Of course, it’s always cold and snowy, but the weather is much, much worse in the winter.

I believe I’ve heard that the scientists there are required to use birth control. I saw a documentary once that said there was a lot of hanky panky going on. You can imagine that must be so since they are usually cooped up down there for a year. And think what that must have been like in the days before they could use the internet and email?

Well, Orcas would do for the coastal regions, but there are some populated areas a little too far inland to hop.

I have heard, though, that there is a rare species of flying reindeer indigenous to the region, and I've never been clear on what they do for 364 days out of the year...

Something else I've been wondering about... Where do baby storks come from?

Oh, and changelings... My understanding with them was that they were fay creatures (generally elves) who could rarely, if ever, have babies of their own (the species continued due to long or even endless lifespans). They would steal human babies (particularly ones belonging to careless mothers) and leave behind magical constructs. Depending on the tale, the construct would die within a few days (probably an explanation for SIDS), would reveal itself to be an illusion within hours, or would grow up to be a soulless monster.

For those interested, here's the wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling

Paul

This one totally cracked me up.

And the baby storks - well, you already mentioned those reindeers...

Most are there for six months, sometimes less. Only about 1/4 of the scientists stay they for the true winter.

A few babies have been born down there.

A DEBATE THAT CANNOT BE WON

Well that is true Scientifically
But they are not mutually exclusive *theories* (ID and evollution)

ID just states that there was a guiding force behind evolution (as far as this is the Vatican's Endorced theory behind Evolution... I have been told (heresay I know, but reputable sources) that the Vatican officially states that evolution may have been the driving force behind the Creation of Man, in so far as Genesis was never meant to be an accurate account of the creation timeline/sequence...)

At this point (as a scientist myself) I do not beleive that there is anything science can produce that will be able to disprove religion entirely. So there is no reason why I cannot beleive even a "random" process like evolution can be a part of God's will. By finding quantum particles (sub atomic, smaller than protons and electrons etc.) we have not proved what caused the particles to be created...

Although this has not prevented me from having to sit through "Science" lectures in psychology, being "taught" (and later examined on) the "Scientific explanation behind the "Human invention" of Religion".... something to do with the how human mind "INVENTED" the idea of an afterlfe in order to reduce the enoumous grief and dispair (even trauma) when a loved one dies...not something really appropriate for a science course...It is totally and utterly an unprovable statement to make with regards to the scientific theory etc.......
As it was the sydney uni psychology department, I was (of course)unsuccessful in my attempts to argue against this, only because they never accept any criticism...


really off topic there
but back to "the cabbage patch kids" (a book by Paul Jennings, a really good Ausie Children's fiction writer, but Ive never read that one)...

I am 3rd out of 9 children (6 boys, and including me 3 girls... before you ask, yes the same parents)
So I guess I always knew about babies "coming from mummy's tummy"...
at first i thought "how gross, all that yucky vommit in the tummy, poor baby... swimming in vommit"
dont remember when I was first told, but it would be in that glorious period of Infantile amnesia (before the age of 4)

after that, my private catholic school, expected the parents to elaborate, and we were first told of the bennefits of Natural Family Planning The Billings Method, this uses basically the womans own cycle, and teaching envolves descriptions of various female secretions at various points in the cycle...
we were taught this at the ge of 15-16 (Yr 11)]
and it was expected we knew everything else... which most of us did, as the school gave parental classes into how to explain these issues to us...


compare this to a 2 yr old i nanny part time (dont know the verb for Nanny... any suggestions)
this year at the age of 2 and 1/2, i took him to the circus one day...
the next week we were painting clowns... as an educational thing
we did arms, legs, head... all with shape stamps and paint brushes...
then the boy starts drawing a third leg...

NICKY (not real name) I say
we only need 2 legs...

No,No,No, Helenaaaa (he says)
this is clown's Penis... (like gee you are so stupid not to know that...

Oh my!!!... silence...
Oh Nicky, we cant see any penis... the clown is wearing Pants... see... Safe, i think

BUt Helena, It's a boy clown... boys have a penis... girls (like mummy) have ginas, ginas are where babies come from... the daddy puts penis in gina, and makes a baby in mummy's tummy

I told the parents later, emphasising i did not teach him this, and there were no Penises at the circus...
They said they know, he is just curious.... and they taught it to him after he watched Dumbo and asked where did babies come from...


PS> Please no comments about the effectiveness of Billings, and the choices my parents made... I am me, they are them, I love my life, and I love my siblings just like you do... we all have our differences, but we are also our own best friends... I cannot even begin to contemplate which of my siblings I will choose between who to kill off..... my parents made their decisions for their own reasons... i had no say in them, and as they do not post on this forum, I object to anyone commenting on this forum.... you have your opinions, I have mine, and they have theirs, but this is not the place to discuss them... Comprende???

Um...sorry, beethoven, but if you put your opinion onto a public forum, then you have to accept that it will be commented on, disagreed with (or agreed with ), dissected, debated and probably a whole lot of other D words.

You can politely request that the other members of the forum impose a self-regulated embargo on such and such a topic, out of courtesy for your feelings, but you have no right to ban discussion on any topic. And if other members don't feel inclined to grant your request and want to discuss it anyway, that's their prerogative.

Basic rule - you don't want it discussed? Don't open up the subject. This forum is the place to discuss anything posted here as it is an opinion/discussion forum.

Having said that, you seem to be expecting some scorn to be poured on/attack to be made on your parents' views and the Billings method and are making an attempt to pre-empt that. I would be mighty surprised if that was the response you got from the members of this forum. Honest, courteous, intelligent discussion/debate, yes. But impoliteness?...Doubtful. And so long as the topic is treated with courtesy and politeness, it's up for discussion like any other subject or opinion posted here.

LabRat

Geez, I must be a terrible person because I know *exactly* which one of my five younger siblings I would off first.

Sue (oldest of six with one sibling who "visited" my house a few months ago while I was at work and "borrowed" two digital cameras and my entire DVD collection - over 200 movies, and *all* the seasons of shows like Friends, Frasier, Arrested Development, Monarch of the Glen, Lois and Clark, etc...)

On the coke as a spermicide conversation. It was studied by Harvard and then several times afterward. If you want to read about it here is a fun article:

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/sperm.asp

Mythbusters actually did an episode where they tested the Coca Cola theory--it actually seemed to make them MORE potent.

*giggle* They got sugar highs?




beethoven, you seem to think that 9 kids is an astonishingly large family. Don't tell my former neighbors (one has 10, one 11, two 12, and another 13), or my aunt and uncle (12), or my sister-in-law's parents (12).

I took a speech class at college a couple semesters back, and one of my classmates had SIXTEEN siblings--although most of them were half-siblings.

One of my ex-boyfriends had 9 half-siblings, and he was the tenth child--the only one from that particular marriage between his parents.

My father was the youngest of TWENTY. Same parents.

When he moved in with his foster family, he became the oldest of 7 there (mostly theirs, but I think one was a cousin they adopted.)

Mom is the youngest of 6, 8 if you count the twins that died as infants.

My Aunt Bridget has 9, and they're all older than me.

Cousin Debbie currently has 5.

Personally, I'm an only child. Is it any wonder that for a long time, I thought it would be no big deal for Lois and Clark to have 5-7 kids? :p

I don't really want to ban all discussion on my opinions...

sorry, but I have had a lot of slack from colleagues, who wanted to teach my parents about contraception...


I just really wanted to avoid any really rude comments of the like...

Although, ffrom my experience here on te forums, I never really expected anything too rude, etc.

I only wanted to avoid any comments directed towards my parents' choices...


They were not my choices (not that I disagree with them or anything)

and it is not my place to disagree, or agree, with their decisions...


I know plenty of people with large families, I just wanted to avoid any discussions about mine, because I have been burned in the past when I mentioned the fat i am one of 9 kids...

I trust you
but anyone can be cautious

Didn’t know that, but it makes sense. The documentary I saw was about one specific base or lab so it wouldn’t have been indicative of Anarctic studies as a whole. I guess I should have specified that before.


Nanny is the term I’d use. I’ve also heard au pair and governess.


There’s nothing wrong with having a bunch of kids. Why would you think folks would be upset? I love big families.


Yep, that would my urge to kill. And I’m sure there will be at least some of that collection they will deny having ever having ‘taken’. Wow, that’s a lot of DVD’s to ‘borrow’.


Oh, my gosh! And I bet our taxes paid for this study…


I’m an only child, too. And I still don’t think it’s a big deal for them to have that many kids. I certainly think it would be okay with Clark. And I can totally see Lois falling in love with being a mom so much that she wanted a bunch of kids.

Well, it's kind of unusual, but nothing wrong with that. Sorry you've gotten grief over it; it's really insensitive for people to complain to you about what your parents did. What do they expect you to do about it?

One of the ladies I work with has 7 siblings, and one of the families at my church has 10 kids. Mostly families are smaller than that, but 3 or 4 kids per family is still very common. Me, I'm afraid I wimped out and stopped at two. We had thought about more, but our son's autistic and that's partly a genetic thing, so we didn't want to risk it.

I'll bet you have some great crowds at holiday times

PJ