Saw a comic recently about this topic and got me thinking. I know what "the talk" is about since it appears in so many media but I don't ever recall having such an experience personally. Did you? What was it like?
I was a late 80s kid, just for context. As far as my experience goes, my parents were very open about sex as a natural process for reproduction. They answered openly any questions I had whenever I had them, keeping to the bare minimum necessary but never avoiding the topic- also never using metaphors as a substitute for plain facts ie. "the birds and the bees".
So at about age 5 or so I was already aware about how reproduction worked on animals, us humans included. As I kept growing up of course I kept connecting the dots on any social aspects of sex and relationships (ie that is supposed to be pleasant, that people do it even if they're not planning to have babies, etc) but I never had a moment of shocking realization regarding sex. I often found it stupid how some of my classmates would giggle or lower their voice when talking about anything sexual like, well, like it's a taboo. And I was often disappointed at how much of what my classmates knew wasn't exactly true, which at the time I chalked to their stupidity, although obviously it wasn't their fault. They were misinformed.
By the time kids got to sex ed in highschool they already had their facts pretty much right though, fortunately.
So I'm curious about your experiences about this while growing up. Was yours similar to mine or did you sit through some awkward conversations? How did you feel about it all?
How old were you at the questioning time?
Anecdotally, the stork along with other stories (did you know? Human babies can also sprout from cabbages) were more effective a few generations ago when people were actually in contact with and interacting with storks or cabbages etc.
My mother has a large family. Some of her aunts/uncles would tell the stork story to their youngest kids so that when the newest baby had to be delivered (at home, in some rural area) the kids would be distracted looking for a stork in the skies while their mother yelled her lungs out in pain from the contractions indoors. Once the kids grew up they figured it out obviously, and as adults they would laugh about it, but as a tool for distraction I think it's pretty clever. It makes sense in the context.
I would've been 4 or 5.