I Told Your Child How Babies Are Made

14 years and I finally had someone who wanted to know.

When I am seeing early adolescents for well child visits I frequently start my discussion about sexuality with the question, "Have your parents told you where babies come from?"  Most laugh a little and say they already know and we move on to deeper discussions of the topic.  Every few months a patient will tell me that they haven't learned about it yet.  So I ask if they want to know.  For the first time I had someone who said yes.

I told the adolescent about the fact that babies are made from genetic material from each parent.  (I used basic medical terminology that I won't repeat here because I don't want this page to get flagged as inappropriate content.)  And then I gave a brief description of the basic way the genetic material from the father gets to the genetic material from the mother.  The patient said, "Oh, that makes sense."  The patient then went on to tell me their erroneous thoughts about what the process entailed - the same things I have heard from other kids whose sole knowledge about the process comes from watching PG13 TV shows.

To the parent, I'm sorry if it upset you.  Though I suspect maybe it is a relief that now you don't have to be the one to have "the talk."  Patient education is one of the things I like about being a primary care doctor.