My son’s birthday was yesterday and now, he is all of 16 — months, that is. Yay! Still can’t believe it.
And that in about 8 months, also, makes him eligible to start reading the new book Where Did I Really Come From by Narelle Wickham just rereleased in Australia. First penned in the 1990′s, it has received a new millennium face lift and is now really pushing the envelope on sex ed. For two-year old toddlers.
The Age of Enlightenment
Apparently, they have a right to have that existential question answered, too, in nice painstaking detail.
There are drawings, detailed descriptions — and a gay angle that is having people up in arms rather than the contents of the book themselves.
To me, the gay angle — including a picture of two gay men holding an infant in the chapter devoted to surrogacy and a description of how two moms may want to forgo intercourse with a man and instead opt out for assisted insemination — is a lot less offensive that the very fact that the sexual intercourse itself is being referenced BEFORE it ever reaches the assisted conception chapter.
Added to the fact that the book in its inside cover claims it has been drafted for use by the New South Wales Attorney General’s office in its Learn to Include program, while the NSW AG, John Hatzistergos, denies having anything whatsoever to do with the publication, and the book seems to me a desperate and tasteless bid for attention.
Obviously, everyone has a right to have their natural curiosity satisfied, and the pat “stork brought you to us” answer wouldn’t…erm, fly, not for any length of time in our enlightened culture. And really, I would be the last person who would want my son wallowing in ignorance or being one of those kids in the old joke, where a 13 year old boy tells his girlfriend upon not being permitted to the showing of an R-rated movie, that since they are not allowed to watch that, they should just go and while away the afternoon having sex.
Current school of thought suggests an age between 3 and 4 as a good time for a child to develop curiosity about sex. That is usually when kids need to memorize the names for all the body parts and start thinking about procreation — but in the way that is appropriate for the age, with answers slowly graduating from simple to somewhat more involved to altogether frank once they are of school age and better able to grasp the dynamics.
There are many versions of the early sex ed books, but one of those most widely recommended by experts is Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle, a squirmingly honest yet naive look at everything from orgasm to fetal development. And the pudgy nudes featured in illustrations are supposedly the furthest thing from erotic. I can’t say whether that is the case, I am yet to read it myself, but, at least, it is being geared to kids 4 to 8.
I don’t think I am a prude. I want my son to know about evolution, and the particulars of intercourse between two consenting adults, and the choices gays of either gender have to make to achieve that age-old drive for parenthood. And by the time junior or high school rolls up, the furthest thing I want is for him to start being ashamed of his sexuality. I am with President Obama on that, who, still as Illinois Senator gave speech at a Planned Parenthood event in which he emphasized the importance of sex education for children. As he said, “It’s the right thing to do…to provide age-appropriate, science-based sex education in schools.”
But at 2 years old…no, thanks. I would rather my son still believed that when people (of whatever sexual orientation) want someone as wonderful as he is, they find a vaguely organic / vaguely spiritual way to get their heart’s desire. That — and in Santa.
He will be disabused of the quaint notions of childhood soon enough. For now, though, well, I want him to stay a CHILD.
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