My daughter will soon be 53, and while we had “the talk” when she was a youngster, birds, and bees never entered the conversation.
While the phrase, “the birds and the bees” is rather hazy by design, it’s used to tell children about the mechanics of human sex without actually mentioning sex or humans
Though there are some variations, the story typically involves bees pollinating flowers, symbolizing male fertilization, and the birds laying eggs, which equates to female ovulation. In another telling of the story, a baby is created when a bee stings a bird.
And without a doubt, before the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and other interesting technologies we take for granted today, it may have been alright to keep the little ones in the dark.
It was also a good phrase to use when talking to other adults when children were present: “Hey did you hear about Sam’s wife? She and Sam were caught doing ‘the birds and the bees’ thing.”
According to The Los Angeles Times, the “The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins” says this about the potential origin of the phrase: In past centuries, the facts of reproduction were “presented by analogy — telling how birds do it and trusting that youngsters would get the message by indirection.”
Well, when I decided to tell my daughter about sexual reproduction, I knew analogies would not work. By the age of 13, my child was already smarter than I was at her age.
It helped that she had already been through the “talk” at school pertaining to menstruation, and that talk included sexual reproduction. So talking to my daughter was easy.
Meaning and origin of the phrase
You know, with the advent of social media, it is simple to discover the origin and meaning of just about anything. The phrase, “the birds and the bees” is prudish poetry that has somehow endured throughout the years, but its origins – like its definition—aren’t entirely clear.
I suppose the connotation in using the phrase is that sex is something natural, something in which all animals and all of nature participates. Bees, in particular, parallel the male act by carrying and depositing pollen into flowers, while birds have an obvious connection to female ovulation by laying eggs.
The 19th-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge used the two species in the context of love in his Work Without Hope:
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – 1825
Many people credit Cole Porter for coining the current incarnation of the phrase with his popular 1928 song called “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love.”
The lyrics included the lines,
And that’s why birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it.
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Cole Porter – 1928
A more modern reference to the phrase occurred in “The Simpsons.” episode Homer vs. Patty and Selma, first broadcast in 1995, according to Phrases.org.uk. The episode includes a scene has 10-year-old Bart Simpson remarking to his friend Milhouse, “The Sun is out, birds are singing, bees are trying to have sex with them — as is my understanding …”
On the bright side, the convoluted origins of “the birds and the bees” may inspire you to skip the phrase altogether next time you’re asked, “Where do babies come from?” This is assuming you are asked before Google has been checked out.
