Kids and sex

Photo by Dale May

When my mother was little, she asked my grandmother where babies came from. She heard the same answer as every other child in their Irish village: People stumbled upon infants while walking through the cabbage patch on the edge of town.

Years later, when my mom was in nursing school in London, hospital staff sent trainees on comical errands to retrieve fallopian tubes from the stockroom. That’s right: Nursing students could not identify their own internal anatomy.I was about nine when I heard these stories of old-timey ignorance. I could hardly believe that adults would be that squeamish about the simple facts of life, or that children were so credulous in the face of such ridiculous fictions.

And yet, unknown to my mother, I thought that conception happened while couples slept, with the sperm slithering across the bedsheets toward their goal like salmon struggling instinctively upstream. Something about our sex talk hadn’t gotten through. Despite my mom’s best intentions, her language was either too clinical or too polite. Probably both.

Knowledge is power—but the devil is in the details. Empower your children by giving them all the facts.—Maureen Shelly, editor in chief of Time Out Kids

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