I was very surprised to see that some people thought the word "pregnant" shouldn't be used in an elementary school yearbook for fear that the kids might ask what it means. My experience was that children were familiar with pregnancy essentially because they were children.
When you are born, your parents are, by definition, part of the cohort that's getting pregnant and having babies. It's therefore very likely that many of the adults around you - your parents' friends and siblings and cousins - are also at this stage of life. This means that there's a good chance that within the first few years of your life, one or more babies will be born to the people around you. It might even be your own younger sibling!
And it's most likely that your parents will explain the concept of the new baby to you. They won't just one day go "Hey, look, a baby!" They'll probably tell you that Mommy or Auntie Em is pregnant, which means she's going to have a baby. And they'll probably even tell you the baby is growing in her belly so that's why her belly is getting fat.
And if this doesn't happen to you, it will probably happen to one of your friends, who will then announce to you "I'm going to have a baby brother and he's growing in my mommy's tummy!"
Myself, I don't remember a time when I didn't know what the word "pregnant" meant. My first cousin was born when I was 1.5, and my sister was born when I was a few months short of 3. I have memories of the cousin being a baby and I have memories where I knew that my mother was going to have a baby, but I don't ever remember actually learning what "pregnant" means. For as long as I've known, it's just meant that a baby is growing in a mommy's belly. It didn't seem sexual or adult (because I didn't know what sex was), it was just a point of fact.
So I'm very surprised that parents would think that elementary school children need to be protected from the concept of pregnancy. In my corner of the world, children were familiar with pregnancy by virtue of the demographic realities of being children.
4 comments:
I was unfamiliar with pregnancy as a kid. I was born just ahead of the 'Baby Bust' cycle, trailing the extended Baby Boom era. Then factor in a weird and large suburban attitude of almost never dealing with other kids outside of our grade level, plus or minus one. Actually, I probably never met a pregnant woman until I was already into my 20s, working and living in the city.
I'm the youngest, and my mother was a bit older than other moms of that era (i.e. she was in her 30s when I was a child, rather than in her 20s). So I didn't see pregnant women on any kind of regular basis. But I certainly knew what pregnancy was. Long before I knew about sex, I knew that babies were carried in their mommy's bellies.
Female teachers became pregnant, had bellies, then went on leave. We saw pregnant women at the supermarket. Some kids knew that some babies were "cut out" of their mothers' bellies and we knew the difference between being adopted or being born in your family.
It's mind-boggling to me that people would think it's inappropriate to refer to pregnancy in front of kids. Quite strange, IMO.
@CQ: Do you remember the age and circumstances in which you learned what the word "pregnant" means, or that babies grow inside the mommy's belly?
Out of sight, out of mind, lol.
Of course young (male) me still knew it wasn't The Stork, Santa, nor a Tooth Fairy. It's just that extra Christmas gifts and fallen tooth money would have been 'more real' to me.
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