The Birds, Bees, Jen and Me

Jennifer Aniston taught my kids about the birds and the bees while we were hanging out one rainy day afternoon. She was telling Owen (Wilson) that they should stop trying to get pregnant and just focus on their careers, while we were stuffing our faces with popcorn. That’s the moment my older daughter reached over to me, a frozen silhouette of a mother wondering what in the world happened to the cute “Marley” dog movie, and asked, “How can you stop trying to get pregnant?”

Uh-oh. Up until then, I had practiced that excellent parenting strategy of avoidance.  ‘When a mom and dad love each other, God gives them a baby’ I had explained.  My reasoning took sex off of our humanly plates and placed it into the realm of divine intervention.  So would Jennifer now have to call God?

“We will talk about it later.” I whispered to my daughter, wondering if we needed to jettison ourselves from the crowded movie theater before any more fastballs were thrown my way.

My grandmother thought babies were conceived when you kissed a boy. After her first kiss at 16, she flew into a complete panic that a baby was soon to arrive. My girlfriend thought babies came from China (which rhymes with…). My own mom sat me down for a briefing that put me off everything, including kissing. Surely I could figure out a more solid strategy for some modern day sex education.

After eating some brain food, a.k.a. chocolate covered espresso beans, I decided to consult my girlfriends with teenagers. Huddles in the park and late night conversations finally brought me to the book, “It’s So Amazing! A Books about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies and Families.” Filled with friendly pictures of cute eggs and spunky sperm, I bought two copies along with The American Girl Book. “The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls.”

On a hot afternoon, I sat down with my girls and went through the basics, using the books as visual aids. It felt like a read-thru of “Robinson Caruso” as we paged through “Meet the Bird and the Bee” and “The Amazing Egg Trip.” That is until we got to the chapter, “What’s Sex?”

“Gross!” exclaimed my eight year old.

“Cool,” my seven year old disagreed. “How do I have twins?’ For the past couple of years, my youngest has stated she wants to have two sets of twins.

“Identical or Fraternal?” I asked, as we jumped to the back of the book and went over the difference between one egg splitting and two eggs fertilizing at the same time.

The conversation went well. My closing statement of ‘This is something a mommy and daddy do when they love each other and want to have a baby’ obviously didn’t cover the whole story but it was all I could handle at the time.

No problem. That is until we went grocery shopping and saw the tabloids at the checkout stand. “Look, Mom, it says, ‘Jen is pregnant with John Mayer’s Child.’

“Who’s John Mayer? Is that her husband?”

“No, it is her boyfriend. Or was.” 

“Are they married?”

Grrr. I had certainly gotten myself into a pickle by not explaining the whole story. And, of course, the questions kept coming after we saw my friend Alex who has a baby with a lesbian couple.

“How did Alex have a baby with two mommies?” “Why doesn’t he live with them?”

I decided it was time to do the full Monty and break it down into choices, lifestyles and babies without a mommy and a daddy. I am not sure they understood everything but at least it was out there on the table, open for discussion.

As for my girlfriend Jen, I hope she will have her own amazing egg trip and get married soon, if she so desires. I want her to know, as we in the mom club already do, that the benefits of babies go way beyond the making.

This essay was recently featured in the Spring Issue of Coast Kids magazine.



Comments

[Lisa Richardson]

My kids are 30 and 25 respectively right now, and I used "Where Did I Come From?" by Peter Mayle. Of course, at first the hilarity of the book was almost more than we all could stand, but it's fairly realistic if you look at people today. My kids have gone back to it over and over again (often as a joke for their friends) but it was a great way to cover the topic.

Of course, if you want to know the efficiency of the message, you have to interpret that for yourself. I have a 30 year old son, married 8 years with no children in sight, and a 25 year old daughter with an 8 year old son, no husband in sight. Ahh well, like most parents, I did the best I could, and tried to laugh at the rest. It worked most of the time.

Thanks for continuing to share your humorously true moments with the world!

[Kathleen Wallstein]

Christine, this is so amazingly funny!! Great essay! I haven't had that "uh-oh" moment yet, but to be prepared, I bought the book "Mommy laid an Egg", in which the parents serve up all these funny bogus stories and then kids set them straight. You've gotta check out this book, just to get a good chuckle out of it...