The birds and the bees

The talk about sex is generally the occasion in most children's lives where their parents explain what sexual relationships are.[1][2]

According to tradition, "the birds and the bees" is a metaphorical story sometimes told to children in an attempt to explain the mechanics and results of sexual intercourse through reference to easily observed natural events. For instance, bees carry and deposit pollen into flowers, a visible and easy-to-explain parallel to the way a man brings about fertilisation. Female birds laying eggs is a similarly visible and easy-to-explain parallel to female ovulation.

Possible origins

Word sleuths William and Mary Morris[3] hint that it may have been inspired by words like these from the poet Samuel Coleridge (1825): '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.'"[4]

Even earlier instances of this idiomatic expression appear in Thomas Carew's work "The Spring" (c.1640), in which the cavalier poet uses earth and its change of seasons as a metaphorical depiction of women and their sensuality (The Norton Anthology of English Literature 1696).[5] To abet his ends, Carew alludes to the "birds and the bees" in lines 7–8 with the use of "swallow", "cuckoo", and "humble-bee" as seen here (lines included are 5–8): "But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth/And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth/To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree/The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee/Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring" (emphasis added; lines 5–9 from "The Spring").[6]

Cole Porter

Dr. Emma Frances Angell Drake (b. 1849) wrote a section of a publication called The Story of Life which was published in 1909. This piece was later picked up and included in Safe Counsel, a product of the Eugenics movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. The author tells her daughters "when you discovered the tiny blue eggs in the robin's nest and I told you that wrapped in each shell was a baby robin that was growing there, kept warm by the mamma bird..." the narrative continues on in vague terms without actually describing sexual intercourse. Later she describes the father's role in reproduction like this; "Sometimes it is the wind which blows the pollen dust from one plant to the other, and sometimes it is the bees gathering honey from the flowers. As they suck the honey from the blossoms some of the plant dust sticks to their legs and bodies, and as they go to another plant in search of sweets this is rubbed off and so the parts of the father and mother plant get together and the seed is made fertile." Safe Counsel was reprinted at least 40 times from 1893 through 1930 and may have been widely enough repeated to have contributed to the euphemism, "the birds and the bees."[7]

Several sources give credit to Cole Porter for coining the phrase.[8] One of the musician's more famous songs was "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love." In Porter's publication from 1928, the opening line for the chorus carried derogatory racial terms like "Chinks" and "Japs", which were later changed, sometime between 1941 and 1954, following CBS's recommendation and NBC's adoption of the new "birds and bees" lyric:[9]

And that's why birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

See also

References
  1. Boynton, Petra (6 September 2013). "How to talk about the 'birds and bees' with your child in the 21st century". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  2. James, Susan (22 September 2011). "Birds and Bees: Tips for Having 'The Talk' With Kids". ABC News. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  3. Morris, William & Morris, Mary (1977). Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-013058-9. Cited in Zimmer, Ben (May 5, 2003). "Where does the phrase 'The birds and the bees' come from". alt.usage.english – via Google Groups.
  4. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (February 21, 1825). "Work without Hope". EServer. Iowa State University.
  5. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. vol. 1 (6th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1993. p. 1696.
  6. Vincent, Arthur, ed. (n.d.). The Poems of Thomas Carew. London: George Routledge & Sons. p. 1.
  7. Davis, Ozora S. & Drake, Emma F.A. (1930). "The Story of Life". In Jeffries, B.G.; Nichols, J.L.; Drake, Emma F.A. & Davis, Ozora Stearns (eds.). Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics (40th ed.). Naperville, IL: J.L. Nichols. pp. 469–486. OCLC 26103651.
  8. "Where did the phrase 'the birds and the bees' come from?". Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo. Archived from the original on 2008-01-29.
  9. Bundy, June (December 25, 1954). "Mr. J.Q. Grows Up; He's Less Prudish About Music on Air". Billboard. p. 16. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved July 2, 2011 – via Google Books.
  10. Burroughs, John (2009) [1887]. Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers (Digital reprint). Project Gutenberg. Archived from the original on 26 September 2008.
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