Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

I never understood what was meant by the term the birds and the bees until I looked it up today on Wikipedia, of course Wikipedia.  I still don’t entirely get it.  It explains to me that the term possibly dates as far back as Shakespeare’s time.  That’s interesting.  From what I gather it is nothing more than a euphemism, a way to talk to kids about sex without actually saying sex.  I would hope that we have come far enough in our societal evolution that metaphorical speaking about sex is no longer necessary.  Talking to kids about sex does not need to be complicated unless, of course, we choose to attach religion to it.  Then the subject becomes a mess about the teaching the Bible as it concerns relationships between men and women.  For this reason I chose not to involve the Bible in teaching such a fundamental (possibly a poor choice of words) biological function.  Kids need to understand four things – procreation, caution, pleasure, and modesty.  Let me also state that kids should be taught these concepts at a time that they are sufficiently mature and before they reach puberty (for obvious reasons).

Procreation

Without sex there would be no people to have sex.  When Johnny comes and asks where babies come from this is where we all start, procreation.  There are two parts to it; we’ll go in reverse order.  Firstly, we should explain how babies are formed.  Kids want to know how they happened.  Explaining how a baby grows is probably the most important part.  The question will then become, “Well, what has daddy got to do with it?”  And this is where we have to explain sex, and where many people turn to the birds and the bees for help.  I think it just confuses the matter.  It’s better just to explain it while leaving minimal room for imagination.  Even beginning to explain the concept of love at this point is confusing the matter.  Parents have trouble because they connect sex with love and then feel they need to explain that to their kids.  Sorry, the kids don’t care about love, they care about where they came from.  Besides, how many people can accurately explain storge, philia, eros and agapē?  It’s unnecessary to go into that much detail.  That discussion can wait until the kids become interested in the opposite sex.

Caution 

It’s good, but not absolutely necessary, to teach kids a little bit about the dangers of sex and indiscriminate contact with other people.  Explaining the risks of sex invariable leads to a discussion of diseases and how disease works.  What better way to squeeze in a medical lesson.  For thousands of years (right up to the 20^th century) people had no idea how viruses and diseases worked and sanitary procedures for preventing them.  The dangers of sex are directly related to that discussion of transmittable diseases.  It is, in fact, the very same discussion.  The sooner kids learn that being unsanitary and careless are good ways of getting sick the better off they’ll be.  My kids regularly wrestle other kids in the park, pick their noses with muddy hands, and pet dogs who have been licking their own and other dogs’ butts.  Then the kids come inside and want to go straight for the refrigerator without washing their hands.  Sex works in exactly the same way.  It’s a good discussion to have anyway.  (For everything anybody ever wanted to know about diseases and prevention go here).

Pleasure

Sex isn’t just for procreation.  It’s also pleasurable.  But, kids don’t understand that yet so why explain it?  Because there will come a day that kids will ask about homosexuality and how that works.  Procreation isn’t going to explain it.  The kids who need to know, for practical reasons, about this aspect of sex will be at puberty.  Little kids don’t care about sex for pleasure, “Ew, that’s gross!”  It goes something like that.  It’s useful to briefly go over the idea of sex for pleasure anyway.  Imagine Johnny’s horror when he accidentally catches his parents doing it.  How exactly do parents explain to him that they aren’t trying to replace him with a newer model child, the latest and greatest, without admitting that it was all just for the fun of it?  Or imagine Johnny’s parents never had any talk at all about sex.  Johnny might think his parents were killing each other (depending on whether his parents are Baptist, Catholic, or Church of England). Kids might not understand the idea of sex for pleasure, but it’s helpful to know anyway.  It covers a lot of bases.

Modesty

Society determines what is appropriately modest and what is not.  Most modesty laws are bull crap.  This becomes a discussion of censorship which I am not a fan of.  But, in terms of sex and sexual displays in public, I have to jump to the side of caution.  Sex is not something to be treated cavalierly, and we should therefore be careful to explain to our kids the need for modesty.  Let’s also remember that there is a difference between public nudity, which I don’t have any problem with at all, and public displays of affection, which I do have a problem with.  Kissing and holding hands is fine.  But, I don’t understand why some people get all horny in public and decide to gross everyone out with their pathetically unfit bodies and unsophisticated approach.  At least if they’re going to hang all over each other in public they should be attractive and good at it.  Back on point.  Kids need to understand that curiosity is fine, but that it’s not appropriate to go playing doctor with all the little girls in their classroom.  That might cause problems.

Kids don’t need to be any more confused than necessary when having the sex talk.  Parents likewise shouldn’t be confused about what to say.  What kids really want to know is why they exist.  They are looking for answers about their own being.  To satisfy their curiosity we have to talk about procreation, both fertilization and fetal development and birth.  Having that understanding will naturally lead kids to ask more questions and for us to have to decide which things are need-to-know and which are superfluous.  As a parent I want to teach them about the dangers of communicable diseases.  The sex talk is a nice place to squeeze that in.  I also want to cover all my bases by discussing, a little bit, that people usually have sex just for the fun of it.  Kids won’t get it, but it’ll be in their minds anyway which is good.  It is my personal preference to leave biblical teaching out of it.  I do not want to get into the the Song of Songs and it’s allegorical relationship to the 4 loves.  Explaining how Lego blocks fit together, pen caps work, the blender plugs into the wall, IKEA furniture assembles, the hose attaches, and what those two stray dogs across the street are doing is hard enough.

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