When I was five, my grandmother gave my younger sister and I a picture book that explained in detail how a man and woman have sex to conceive a baby.
It got us excited. Until then, our only point of reference for babies’ origins was Disney’s “Dumbo,” who was carried to her mother by a stork.
My mother, embarrassed, put the book on a high shelf and hoped that was the end of it.
My sister and I, of course, climbed onto a chair to put it down and continued to scan the footage, laughing and pointing at the naked bodies in disbelief while my parents clumsily tried to dodge our barrage of questions.
A few years later, when they thought I was the right age to learn the truth about sex, childbirth, and puberty, they gave me “the talk.”.
Sex education was also taught in the Dutch and English elementary schools I attended.
But many children around the world are not taught enough about sex until they reach high school, if at all.
“There are still many children who receive popular stories or mythical answers about where babies come from,” says Lucy Emmerson, executive director of the UK’s Sexual Education Forum.
Where do these fables come from?
The crane that steals babies
The stork is one of the most present. Movies, cartoons, cartoons and picture books feature these graceful, long-legged birds delivering newborns to their parents.
The original myth comes from ancient Greecewhere cranes, which bear many similarities to storks, have been linked to baby theft.
In Greek mythology, Hera, the goddess of childbirth, turned her rival Gerana, queen of the pygmies, into a crane because she was having an affair with her husband Zeus.
Unwilling to part with her newborn son, Gerana picked up the baby, wrapped her in a blanket and flew away with the baby in her beak.
Despite this horrific ending, Andersen’s story quickly spread around the world.
In its benign form, the stork myth still lingers in popular culture.
To this day, nevus flammeus nuchae, a common birthmark on newborn skin caused by abnormalities in blood vessels, is still colloquially referred to as “stork bite,” underscoring the influence of the story.
A similar confluence of ancient beliefs and parenting apprehension lies behind another colorful myth about where babies come from: the notion that they grow up in cabbage fields.
The myth may have stemmed from various beliefs and practices surrounding plants and fertility.
In Scotland, it was common for children to put cabbage leaves outside their houses to ask the fairies to bring them a brother, Quinn says. And women used to eat cabbage to be more fertile and have good pregnancies.
In French, the term affection for a small child is “mon petit chou” (“my little cabbage”).
Like the boy rescued by the stork, the baby born in the cabbage is “found in nature and discovered as part of the natural world,” says Warner.
Similar tales of children growing up in gardens and orchards exist around the world, like an endearing Japanese folk myth about a boy who emerges from a peach.
For parents, they offered a “way to explain things to their kids that they couldn’t otherwise explain to them,” says Quinn.
“Many parents didn’t understand their own anatomy, so it would have been difficult for them to explain the facts to their children,” says Warner.
The stories got her out of trouble.
Harmful Myths?
Although the stork remains a popular motif on greeting cards and gifts, it’s hard to imagine parents in the 21st century trying to convince their children that babies are born this way.
But other myths and euphemisms remain surprisingly common, says Spring Chenoa Cooper of the City University of New York School of Public Health.
One of the reasons is simply that many parents still don’t know exactly when and how to talk about it.
But these euphemisms can be confusing for kids, Emmerson says. Also, it can be difficult for parents to later correct the story and admit they lied.
And, Cooper points out, “when people make assumptions based on myth and misinformation, the outcome can be damaging.”
In Australia, the HPV vaccine given to young people to prevent cervical cancer is commonly known as the “sex vaccine”.
That led some girls to mistakenly believe it protected them from STDs and that their partners didn’t have to use condoms, Cooper says.
Another danger with using euphemisms is that they can establish a pattern of not talking openly about sex, experts say, making it difficult for children and teens to trust their parents.
“They can get attacked and feel like they can’t talk about getting pregnant and not telling anyone, or getting an STD and not treating it,” says Cooper.
“The fear of speaking out about these things can have lifelong consequences.”
Make
Schools, on the other hand, do not necessarily eliminate gaps and misunderstandings.
“If parents think, ‘If I don’t say anything, they’ll understand when they get to school,’ that probably isn’t the case,” Emmerson warns.
Apparently my grandmother was right when she gave me this illustrated book about sex and babies.
But for the parents who cannot imagine this level of openness and factual detailsthe researchers suggest starting small, with short, simple conversations rather than one big conversation.
“[Se trata] recognize that there will be many opportunities to teach your children some vocabulary about their bodies and also about their emotions,” says Emmerson.
For example, when a young child asks how babies are born, “suffice it to say that the baby grows in the mother’s womb and comes out of the vagina.”
“You don’t have to explain the intercourse. Just give a factual answer that is not fabrication.”
“Any time a child asks you a question about sex, answer very simply and directly,” Cooper recommends.
“You don’t have to sit them down and lecture them for an hour…it might intimidate them to stop asking about it.”
Important concepts such as consent and boundaries can be taught early.
Does that mean that charming stork and cabbage stories have no place in modern educational culture?
No, but we can enjoy them for what they are: colorful works of fantasy passed down from previous generations.
(Taken from BBC World)