Isn't calling it "The Birds and the Bees" just as wierd as discovering your poodle and cat getting freaky?

Question

Doesn't it play right in the hands of people who make jokes about New Zealanders and Sheep or Texans and Cows?

Surely they could just say, "Son we're going to have a talk about how babies are made" and not a National Geographic spectacle about hive culture, the honey economy and the nature of lesbianism in seagull society.

Answer 1

"The birds and the bees" (sometimes expanded to "the birds, the bees and the butterflies" or "the birds, the bees, the flowers, and the trees") is an idiomatic expression which refers to courtship and s*x, and is usually used in reference to teaching someone, often a young child, about s*x and pregnancy. The phrase is evocative of the metaphors and euphemisms often used to avoid speaking openly and technically about the subject.

According to tradition, the birds and the bees is a metaphorical story sometimes told to children in an attempt to explain the mechanics and consequence of sexual intercourse. According to that story the birds are like men and the bees like women: Birds are free to fly wherever they like, but bees are enslaved to a single queen their entire life and their whole life is dedicated to keeping her alive. Bees pollinate flowers, birds spread the seed, men impregnate eggs, women give birth. s*x is key for survival of both.

"Word sleuths William and Mary Morris hint that it may have been inspired by words like these from the poet Samuel Coleridge: 'All nature seems at work ... The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing ... and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.' "

Answer 2

Hey L. 83 you copied that straight word for word from wikipedia.

Answer 3

LOL, it's not about birds gtting it on with bees, but about methods of sexual reproduction: birds laying eggs; bees pollinating plants.

Th idea is to start with analogies that don't seem, well, s**y, to lay a foundation for the idea of male and female, and zygotes and such. Actually, it's almost a euphemistic expressing for "having the s*x talk."

Answer 4

People in our not-so-enlightened-as-we-think Western society have long been nervous about the subject of sexuality.  It's a holdover from Victorian society among other things.

Yeah, I think that using cheesy metaphors is sorta silly.  Children are interested in all things about being an adult though they do not understand context.  There are ways to describe "where babies come from" in ways that make sense to a 5 year old, an 8 year old, a 12 year old, ... that don't involve unhelpful similes.