Some day you will be asked this question by your little girl or your little boy—if you have not already been asked. What will your answer be?
Even if you have been accustomed to giving frank answers to your children's questions about all sorts of subjects, you are likely to hesitate when it comes to this. You will be tempted to say what you were probably told yourself, under similar circumstances. You will perhaps say that the doctor brings babies in his satchel, or that the stork brings babies in his bill. Or perhaps you will feel impelled to tell Harry to go out and play, and ask you again a few years later when he will be old enough to understand.
The telling of a myth like the stork story is harmless enough for the time being. We have entertained Santa Claus for ages without undermining the morals of our children. And we shall continue to retell the fairy stories, for, although they are not, strictly speaking, "true" stories, they have their place in the life of the child. Why can we not go on, then, as we have done in the past, leaning upon the stork?
The difference between the story of where babies come from and the story of Santa Claus or Mother Hubbard is a very important one. Santa Claus and Mother Hubbard represent ideas and interests that are but passing phases in the child's development, whereas knowledge about reproduction is something that grows in interest with the years and reaches its deepest significance just at the time when you can hardly, if at all, regain your hold upon your child, once you have lost it. It does not matter much who disillusions your child about Santa Claus. The disappointment is brief, and soon the child can look upon the legend as a joke. But it does matter very much who tells your child that the stork story is all a lie, and how he is told.
It is well for mothers to realize that the embarrassment which they may feel when this question is first asked is quite foreign to the child, for the child at this time has no knowledge whatever of sex. To him it is simply a question for satisfying his momentary curiosity. Later on, when the child has become aware of the idea of sex, he is not likely to ask his mother embarrassing questions, or, if he should ask them, the situation would be equally embarrassing to both—unless you have in the meanwhile kept in close sympathy with your children, and they feel that they can come to you with any question and be answered frankly. And the way to keep them in close sympathy is by meeting frankly every question as it arises. It is not necessary to answer every question by telling everything you know; it is necessary merely to tell enough to satisfy the child's immediate need. Not only, then, does your frank answer tend to keep the child in touch with the mother, but you protect him in this manner against going for his information to sources that are frequently contaminating. The information that boys and girls give one another about sex matters is often something appalling, not only in its distance from the truth, but in the amount of filth with which it is encrusted. It is the desire to keep his mind clean, then, that should prompt the mother to tell her child what he wants to know when he wants to know it. A third consideration is found in the fact that many children, when they do not receive satisfactory answers to their queries, will reflect and brood about the subject to a degree that becomes morbid. This is especially likely to happen where the subject of the child's inquiry is treated as though it were an improper or a wicked one to speak about, so that the child dares not ask others for enlightenment.
That the early answering of the child's questions may offset both morbid curiosity and the danger of resorting to filthy sources of information is illustrated by the story of a seven-year-old boy who was invited by an older boy to come to the wood-shed for the purpose of being told an important secret. "If you promise not to tell any one," the older boy began, "I will tell you where babies come from." "Why, I know where babies come from," replied the second, not greatly interested. "Oh, yes you do! I suppose you think that a stork brings them? Well, you're 'way off there. The stork ain't got nothing to do with it," the instructor continued breathlessly, for fear of being deprived of his opportunity to impart his precious secret. At last the secret was out; but the younger replied, coolly, "That's nothing. My mother told me that when I was four years old." Since the matter had ceased to be a secret, and since the story even lacked novelty, all opportunity for the elaboration of details was destroyed.
But what can you tell to a child of four or five? For that is the age at which the question is likely first to present itself. Remember that the child is not asking a sex question, but one about the direct source of himself, or about some particular baby that he has seen. You can say that the baby grew from a tiny egg, which is in a little chamber that grows as the baby grows, until the baby is big enough to come out. This will satisfy most children for a considerable time, but some children will immediately ask, "Where is that little room?" To which you may reply, "The growing baby must be kept in the most protected place possible, so it is kept under the mother's heart." Or, you may say that the baby grew from a seed implanted in the mother's body, that it was nourished by her blood until it grew large enough, when it came out at the cost of much suffering. Of course, you will tell the story as personally as you can, about your particular child, and in as simple a way as you can.
If you tell the little girl or boy this much you have told him all that he probably cares to know at this time; you have told the truth so that you have nothing to fear about his being disillusioned either as to the story or as to your own trustworthiness; and you have avoided arousing the suspicion that certain subjects are unworthy of understanding. And then you will find that this new conception of his relation to you, as truly a part of your being, will deepen and strengthen his natural feeling of affection and sympathy. It is also well with the first telling to impress the child—in so many words, if necessary—with the idea that he must always come to you for anything he wants to know, and that you are always glad to tell him.
As the child grows older his knowledge of life must grow also. In the country and in small towns the child becomes familiar with many important facts about life without any special effort being required to inform him. He learns that chickies hatch out of eggs and that the eggs have been laid by the mother hen. He learns that the field and garden plants grow from seeds and that the seeds were borne by the mother plants. He learns about the coming of the calf and the colt; and even city children can learn that kittens and puppies come from mother animals. It is a comparatively simple matter for a child with such knowledge to get the further information that the baby brother developed from an egg that mother kept near her heart during the hatching time. Much of this knowledge that the country child acquires incidentally must be brought to the city child through special efforts and devices, in the school as well as in the home, that he may acquire the fundamental facts of bearing and rearing young, in plants as well as in animals, and that he may look upon these facts not as strange or disconcerting marvels, but as natural happenings.
Miss Garrett, one of the most successful teachers of sex and reproduction, tells the story of some city boys who had been taught these things, and who had decided, in their club, to raise rabbits. The selection of a father rabbit and a mother rabbit was too important a matter to leave to a committee, so the whole club went in a body to attend to these preliminaries. The care the boys took of the mother rabbit during her pregnancy was in itself an education. Later Miss Garrett saw the leader of the club—who had been the "toughest" of the gang—with another boy on the street, while a pregnant woman was trying to cross with a heavy basket. "Come on, Jim," he called, "let's help her across." This same boy but a few months back would have ridiculed the poor woman in her plight.