Seriously, is replying to kids where babies come from such a hard question to answer? My mother and a teacher had no issues saying where they came from.
I am with game2009, I really hope it is just gag material. Of course you won't give the gory details to a small children, but you can explain even to them.
It is kinda similar to the question: "where does the meat we are eating come from?". Would you bring the children to an intensive animal farm and slaughterhouse? Of course not, but still you can explain something without lies.
Seriously, is replying to kids where babies come from such a hard question to answer? My mother and a teacher had no issues saying where they came from.
This is the 2nd time you've asked this. wasn't the first time enough? Just because other cultures other than your own are different doesn't mean you have to be all "OMG, everyone is weird except for me!!!"
That's just every country in the world making fun of each other. Everyone thinks Americans are fat slobs, Japanese are just big perverts and Koreans are just damn crazy.
You're generalizing things pretty hard here. I fully understand what this entire pool is based off of and that's why we even have the "Birds and bees" pool too. Because this is a real life troupe that also goes with the "Nostalgia" pool as well.
Because I never found the whole "where babies come from" thing to be funny at all, and even though I asked this before, I want to hear from more than just a couple of people to get a better understanding of things.
And I don't really think this has anything to do with culture. Like etb said, you can simply give an honest answer without having to go into details. Are you trying to imply that in some cultures, adults are required to explain in details to children, while some don't, are you? How hard is it simply telling kids that babies come from women's tummies and leave it at that?
It's kind of sad that you can't find the humor in the "where babies come from?" question. It is a gag of putting people on the spot with a sudden question that they are likely not mentally prepared to answer. People put into the spotlight that are unprepared will result in odd responses and particularly canned responses to avoid answering the question. If you do get a real response, it will typically be one reflecting more the mentality of the person.
How a person responds will be a predominately cultural thing, but you need to remember that even within the same country you will have differences in cultural values. A rural community is going to have differences in values from an urban community, and even cities within different parts of the country will be different from each other. Communities that have strong religious values on the subject of human sexuality will more likely encourage not wanting to directly talk about anything of a sexual or romantic nature, especially to children. I think some of that comes from a belief that giving knowledge of the subject to children will make them want to explore the subject more, and delve into something that they're not mature enough to handle. They may also believe it could expose children to potential sexual abuse or them sexually abusing someone else, by either talking about it to the wrong person or trying to experiment on their knowledge on someone else.
A lot of people are raised in areas where religion has had an impact on the teaching and discussion of human sexuality, and that such topics are "dirty". Coming from such a culture will weigh on people, as they're taught that you don't talk about such things. This results in such topics being embarrassing and maybe even angering to talk about, thus people not wanting to discuss it or finding ways of avoiding answering the question.
I'm sorry my mother told me she was going to give birth to a baby when her belly turned big and not because she ate too much and got fat when I was only four years old. I'm sure people whose age gaps aren't that big between their younger siblings should notice something is different about their mothers' appearances before their siblings came into the household.
I'm an Asian coming from a Christian family, but we don't consider answering children where babies come from a "sexual taboo" of any kind, because there is no need to go into details other than "they come from mommy's belly."
Like etb said, if a child asks you where meat come from, are you going to go into details about slaughterhouses and how animals are killed? I'm sure people with the right mind are simply going to say they come from pigs, cows, chickens, etc. and leave it at that.
Sure, you can answer the initial question that way just fine. What people fear is the almost inevitable curiosity of children making it highly unlikely they stop there.
Where do babies come from? Inside Mommy. How do they get there? Daddy puts it there. How? By loving Mommy. Well, I love my sister... ...uh
Still, if you don't find it funny, it doesn't fit your culture and more people explaining to you why it's funny to them isn't going to change that for you. So the effort is moot.
You're misunderstanding some stuff, but I've clearly didn't read your comments well enough and wrote something made on a poor understanding of your comments.
Where a baby comes from itself isn't a "sexual taboo" it's answering "how did the baby got there?" that is getting too close to the taboo, which is why the issue gets danced around and potentially wild explanations are used to at least delay having to explain further. The question being asked though is "how are babies made?" and simply answering "from mommy's belly" doesn't really succeed in answering that question at all. If anything it's really only delaying answering the question... which puts it in more or less the same category as saying they're brought by storks.
game2009 said:
Like etb said, if a child asks you where meat come from, are you going to go into details about slaughterhouses and how animals are killed? I'm sure people with the right mind are simply going to say they come from pigs, cows, chickens, etc. and leave it at that.
The appropriate question to what she is asking wouldn't be "where does meat come from?" it would be "how is meat made?". Answering from the animal only answers the "where" and it doesn't answer the "how" question. On what is and isn't acceptable for the how question though is culturally decided. If you lived somewhere where you had to live off the land and/or be heavily self-sufficient in your food supply, a place where the killing and processing of animals was simply a natural part of living, then the bar of what is and isn't acceptable to explain to a child is likely quite different than for those who live where your meat is already butchered. For people who have to hunt game or kill their livestock for their meat, I'm sure they're quite more readily willing to show all the gory details to their children (at least at a younger age than what most people living in a city would find acceptable), because the subject to them isn't dirty, it isn't disgusting, it's simply a part being alive and having to live.
The best likely explanation for all of this is probably simply the degree of detachment a society has from the process itself. The whole squeamishness toward the processing of meat is more a sign of how far removed the average person has been able to get from the actual process itself in their normal lives. The same is likely true for sex and how babies are made. People are more squeamish on the topic because we've been able to detach normal life from the process, if by anything through the development of better privacy. For quite awhile the common home was a single room building, and that never stopped parents from producing offspring, even when they already had other children. If you look at more tribal type societies I don't think it is uncommon to find that sex or sexual acts aren't taboo subjects, but you're not going to find the degree of privacy in these societies as you find in more developed modern societies. By having the process more exposed, it meant more readily having to explain it and teach from it, instead of hiding and shaming it.
You make good points. But I have to say that I mentioned slaughterhouse and intensive farming for a reason. It is not comparable to the livestock humans used for millenia.
You make good points. But I have to say that I mentioned slaughterhouse and intensive farming for a reason. It is not comparable to the livestock humans used for millenia.
Not comparable? I don't see how a farmer or hunter gutting, cleaning, skinning, and carving up their animal isn't comparable to what happens in a slaughterhouse.