When I was about five, I would climb under my mother’s sweater, hold my hot, sticky face against her stomach, and beg her to have another baby.
My poor, menopausal mother had to field at least six months of this, patiently and kindly explaining to a bulbous, school-age child that her body had run out of eggs. Yes, I was five, but I was old enough to ask the questions, meaning I was old enough to hear her answers. I learned that babies are made when sperm meets an egg, but that once someone reaches menopause there are no more eggs to be met. A baby simply cannot happen.
Because time is a circle rather than a line, I am now the mother to a school-age child who begs me, on a daily basis, to have a baby. My son has become a rampant pro-natalist. In this particular regard, he would give the far-right clerics and online misogynists a serious run for their money. Since I told him that sometimes pregnant people have to take extra vitamins to stay healthy, he has been offering to make me fruit salads every morning. He asks me loudly, and in public, if I’m going to “wee on the piece of paper that says you’re pregnant.” The other day, on the way back from school, he darted into a hedge and came back with a handful of fluffy, round nettle seeds, telling me that they were a good source of iron. He’s told his teaching assistant that I’m having a baby next week. He made a bed in his room for the baby. When we recently visited a friend and her eight-day-old baby, he held the infant in his arms and gazed at it with something like wonder. I am not pregnant. But it’s not through want of effort on his behalf.
All of which has prompted a discussion about how much we need to tell him about how babies are made. I was horrified to read news reports last week that the United Kingdom’s education secretary Gillian Keegan is planning to outlaw any sex education for children under nine. It’s a stupid, dangerous, and regressive policy. When has repressing knowledge ever been in our best interests? Closing down children’s curiosity, alienating them from their bodies, leaving them vulnerable to misunderstanding and even exploitation—surely that cannot be this flagging government’s trump card? Their desperate bouquet to woo the voting public? Vote for us, we’ll under-educate your children!
Since 2020, all primary school children and young people in the UK have been given age-appropriate sex, health, and relationship education that, to quote the government website, “should put in place the key building blocks for healthy, respectful relationships, focusing on family and friendships, in all contexts, including online.” This education sits alongside “the essential understanding of how to be healthy” and parents are already encouraged to speak to staff about what they’re teaching. We can all read their curriculum and ask how it will be delivered. If they really feel the need, parents can withdraw their children from those lessons. Personally, the idea of denying my child education, understanding, and knowledge seems antithetical to the whole project of raising him, but perhaps that is because I was brought up in a home where all questions were met with respect and age-appropriate answers.
When I first saw a packet of condoms in the wild, my dad told me, in a simple and matter-of-fact way, that people like the feeling of having sex but don’t always want to have a baby, and so they use a condom to avoid getting pregnant. As I remember it, he explained this piece of information in precisely the same manner he used while telling me why you have to bleed radiators—i.e. a practical and rational one—and I am grateful that one of my early explanations of sex was that it could involve pleasure and didn’t have to result in pregnancy. What a gift to give to a person. What a way to prepare your child for a healthy, joyful life.
My son, like all children, goes in and out of obsessions. Insects, carnivorous plants, the Ancient Egyptians, mushrooms, deep sea creatures, Pokemon–and now, babies. He is inquisitive, nurturing, and affectionate. In time, his obsession with having a baby may wane, especially as I can’t promise him a sibling. But I can promise to honor his interest. From angler fish to ovaries, I will always answer his questions.