Ask Lemmy

People got married and somehow the babies appeared

I didn't think about it pretty much before learning about sex.

My parents had a book about sex, pregnancy and relationships. The pictures were mostly cold anatomical drawn stuff. I think the riskiest picture was just naked hugging from the waist up. Since I was too young to read, I assume my parents never bothered to hide the book.

It had pictures showing the baby growing inside the womb. So I learned early on that babies come from women. It never occurred to me ask what triggered it, I think I just assumed women chose to do it or something. It wasn't until 4th grade that I had a proper class about reproduction at school and learned the man's involvement.

I must have heard the expression "they slept together" and figured sex was something that happened when both people were asleep in the same bed

Not sure if this breaks the rule but I didn't see any rule against nsfw questions

Women became pregnant simply because they loved a man and were loved back for a long time.

It came together shortly after I saw mom "wrestling" with my uncle

It grows in mummy's tummy. Some say daddy puts it there but I don't see a practical way to do that so I'm discounting it. I've been burned before with that Santa nonsense so I'm not falling for bullshit a second time.

My folks never skipped the technical stuff, they just simplified it way down. So my earliest recollection is still knowing that the boy puts his penis in the girls vagina, and that's how they become mommies and daddies after 9 months, because that's how long it takes the baby to grow inside. While it all sounds silly now, sometimes people change their minds after they grow up, because making a baby with someone special and starting a family can be a fun and exciting thing.

Or something along those lines anyway, I obviously wouldn't have explained it quite as competently back then. But that's the gist.

In my culture, the groom and bride share a glass of milk on the first night of marriage. I thought that a woman drinking from the same glass as a man lead to her getting pregnant

I used to think the baby growing process starts right from day 1 of marriage without doing anything.

I just thought when two lovers kiss, the woman would get pregnant. Pretty common.

I watched a looot of Animal Planet when I was a kid, so I didn't have many illusions. I could never figure out how the fuck birds did it, though. I figured that male birds must have extendable bits somehow, but female birds have a tail in the way.

We kept ducks when I was a kid, and during the time that we kept a mallard, he would straight up stand on the female duck's backs, and that struck me as terribly inefficient. To support this, none of the female ducks ever laid fertilised eggs, so I figured he was just terrible at it.

Little did I know about the horrifying intricacies of duck mating. I'll thank the internet for informing me in later life... Yeesh.

In my SEA culture, we pretty much know about sex fairly early because we don't consider it "dirty" (though it was drilled early on that extramarital sex is bad because the parents and baby will be treated as outcasts). The actual copulation act is not talked about until you're around 12 y.o. or so, but it is generally known by children that married people go "sleep" with each other, have "fun" and then the wife gets pregnant.

I had a science book explaining bodily functions and all. They basically drew a bunch of tiny people operating the human body. Reproduction section was the same, which showed a male structure and female structure. I understood the mechanics but never really knew where this hole was in the body. That came in later.

Well, I saw pregnant women, how the baby got there was a complete mystery. Right before puberty, there were wild speculations about what boys and girls do for the girls to become pregnant.

IIRC, mummy had to go to the shop to buy a seed to put into her tummy

back in my youngest day, there's a place named mall and supermarket, where parents go and get a baby for them. nowadays, parents order babies on their smartphones and deliver by delivery service.

I thought they were created by grey aliens

Babies are delivered by a stork

I thought that babies were pooped out and that boys gave birth to boys and girls gave birth to girls, and I thought conception was sleeping in the same bed of a non-family member of the opposite sex. I eventually cleared up all my misconceptions, and thought it was low key unfair that women have to do both. I still feel that way tbh like why can't we just share the physical burden somehow, but not much I can do about it

In Asia: our grandparents would tell us we were either picked up from the rubbish bin, or exploded from a rock

I kinda just thought pregnancy happened when two people were in love

I never heard of some distracting story like the stork one. I can't remember when I learned about it though, I've "always known" it's done the way it is.

Before I learned about sex? I don't think I really thought about it before I learned about sex, I did learn about it at a very early age so I don't think I was really thinking about that before I was told about sex.