My Mom’s Having a Baby!
by Dori Hillestad Butler, Illustrated by Carol Thompson
This delightful watercolor-filled picture book reached #4 on the
American Library Association’s Top Ten Challenged Books List for 2011. Reasons for being banned? Nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group. Seriously, “sex-education” is a valid reason for removing a book from the library? You can challenge a book for wanting to TEACH YOU SOMETHING? Or just because it is teaching you something about SEX? And since SEX is a terrible, horrible thing (that we pretty much all engage in at some point in our lives and is required to perpetuate the human race) and HAVING A BABY is a very scandalous affair, I can totally see why this would need to be pried from the chubby fingers of every preschooler on the verge of learning the word vagina (the horror!).
Ok, ok, all sarcasm aside, this is a totally legit non-fiction book designed to help parents teach young children (toddlers to early elementary) where babies come from. Taken in this context I find it to be VERY age-appropriate. Elizabeth’s mom has just discovered she is four weeks pregnant. She learns the baby is only as big as her tooth, but he has a heart and a spine and skin just like a real person. There is a super cute drawing of a maze-like umbilical cord delivering snacks and yummy food right to the baby’s belly (ice cream, carrots, and broccoli, oh my!) with an excellent explanation of how the baby is protected by a special sack of water and fed food and oxygen through this “twisty tube.” Butler makes sure to explain all the aches and pains and grumpiness of pregnancy in a way that children can understand and not take personally. Most children are frightened that something dreadful and dangerous is happening to their precious mothers, and this book can help put them at ease.
When Elizabeth wants to know how the baby got inside the belly her mom says, “It takes two people to make a baby. A man and a woman. Children can’t make babies.” That’s a good point! There are a lot of small children walking around with the misconception that you can spontaneously become pregnant through your belly button (no thanks to the Bible) or that you may stumble upon infants while walking among the cabbages. Thompson’s simple drawings are designed to illustrate the basic difference between male and female reproductive organs. The nudity is far from titillating, as the genitalia are mostly harmless blobs of peach made to represent flesh. The most “shocking” passage is the actual description of the sex act: “The man puts his penis between the women’s legs and inside her vagina. After a while, a white liquid shoots out of the man’s penis and into the woman’s vagina. The liquid is full of millions of sperm. They swim up the woman’s vagina, through her uterus, and into one of her fallopian tubes.”
I gave a similar explanation to my five-year-old (minus the drawings) when I was pregnant with his baby brother and he asked me how Oliver “got into my tummy.” He wasn’t frightened or damaged and has yet to start lusting after anyone on the playground. A quarter century ago my own mother gave me a similar explanation, as well as some horribly illustrated book from the late-seventies about the “facts of life.” I tucked the hardback behind my shelf full of more respectable fiction and only pulled it out when I could be absolutely sure no one would barge in on me. My male cousins, on the other hand, would bribe me to steal my mother’s
Reader’s Digest Medical Encyclopedia so they could sneak looks at the soft-focus pencil drawing of a wistful looking (and very-pregnant) woman reclining, her resplendent milk-breasts resting on her sensually sloping abdomen. Either that or they actually wanted to look at the cut-away testicle illustration, also a real beauty. My point is, children will learn about things when they are ready and curious, with or without our help. Not only does it do a disservice to children to poo-poo their very real and mature questions with lies like, “the stork brought him during the night,” but it is ineffectual in the long run. I would rather my child find out from me where babies come from than from his (often misinformed) peers, or worse, the internet. And sometimes, even despite a parent’s best efforts, small children still mix up fantasy and reality. I believed a penis looked like a tube sock (and could be stretched or rolled up like one) until I was about 13. And let me tell you, 13 was a fine age to start that journey to growing up. I really should send my Sex. Ed. Teacher a thank you note.
Dori Hillestad Butler,
in defense of her work, has said,
Reading a book about a difficult, embarrassing, or unpleasant subject is a good way to open dialogue with your child! Even if you disagree with the values or the point of view in the book, it’s a good opportunity to share your own values with your children. But some people just don’t want to do that. Some people would rather raise a generation of uninformed kids who have never learned to think for themselves.
She has put up with hate mail and cyber-bullying and being #4 on the ALA’s Banned Books List (which personally I see as a compliment) when all she has done is written a totally age-appropriate, lucid tale of a small family adding a new baby to the mix and dealing with all the questions that arise from younger siblings, something a million families across the world can relate to. She has taken a difficult topic and approached it with tact and dignity and respect, both for the parents as readers and the children as listeners. Because let’s face it, most literate children would be absolutely mortified to be caught checking out a book with baby penises on it from the library! I think anyone who gets their nose out of joint by reading this book needs to get a handle on their own fears and insecurities before they start raining the fire and brimstone down on an author who is trying her best to answer the innocent question that makes every parent squirm: “Where do babies come from?”
Highly recommended (especially for those afraid of the word "vagina").
