There’s a book from the 1970s that’s being called The Most Traumatizing Kids Book Ever. All of the pages are viewable online, and I read the whole thing — it’s short — and it’s just a straightforward description of sex and childbirth, with cute simple pictures.
OK, the smiling jazz-hands baby is a bit inaccurate, but that’s why it’s an un-traumatizing children’s book.
The real thing would have more screaming and blood and slime and bear more of a resemblance to the chest-burster scene in Alien. But otherwise, if I’d known about in the 80s and 90s when I had young kids, I’d have had it around the house for them to learn about sex, with no embarrassment at all.
I like how calm and ‘there-there’ the man in the striped shirt looks. I’m assuming he’s the father. Who has obviously been to all the pre-natal classes, and knows just how to act during childbirth!
Not so sure about the doctor’s expression, though. Something a bit… ‘yeah, that’s great, now hurry it up a bit’ about that face.
And who’s catching the baby??
Is that a bed of eggplant and cooked squash they are serving her on?
Impressive sterile technique, either way!!
I find it a bit disturbing that we don’t see the woman’s arms, but we see her hair ribbons.
Now that I’ve seen the whole book, I find it rather cute. Nothing traumatizing there.. of course, it would also be cool to have similar kinds of books for different family units and genders of folks involved in the baby making process.
I think I’d be ok using this to teach my children if I had any.
I don’t think anyone needs to catch that baby. They look like they’re about to fly out. A Kryptonian baby perhaps?
That baby looks like it’s pulling itself out. My nethers clenched up just looking at it.
Sort of looks like the dad and the doctor got the drugs, not the mother.
Looking at the page right before this one, what is the doctor holding? Is he going to plunge the baby out? Is that a suction device or a listening device, or did he just decide to test a few reflexes while they’re hanging around waiting for the baby?
Sex is about the man being ‘especially loving’ and the man making love, rather than the couple making love to each other.
It looks awfully familiar, actually – I’m sure that was the book my Mum showed my when I was a kid. I don’t remember getting traumatized by it. And, of course, I turned out to be perfectly normal (*ahem!*).
I find the “art”work traumatizing.
I feel like the screen should turn black except for a circle around the baby as it says, “That’s all, folks!”
I would not excuse them by saying they interchanged those two words. I agree this artwork’s images are not traumatizing, just kinda “eewwwy”. I would say they are vastly over-exaggerating the “ick” factor. To even consider describing it as “informative”, is a mistake. That image of childbirth is more misleading than informative. A child birthing hands-first is very rare and pretty “uncomfortable” for both participants, to have the baby grinning during the process is NOT representative of typical occurrences.
[backstepping (marginally)]: The images are “nice”; presenting icky events more pleasantly than gorey realism, but while nice, they are a little too cartoonish to be informative in any detail way. Nice way of initially presenting those events conceptually.
So all I got is: neither traumatizing, nor informative.
Cool to see such, though. Thanks, PZ.
Also, I think I have the Soviet version somewhere at home, though that one may be from the 1980s. I may have to dig it up, scan it, and share it here. Equally enlightening.
Speaking of enlightening, I was in a bookstore recently that had a new sex-ed for kids book out, that basically goes through all kinds of genital- and sex-related questions in a question-answer format, with simple pictures. Included stuff on same-sex relationships, which was… a rather new thing for Here.
Anyway. I think simple, gore-less, smile-y pictures is best when educating young children about these things (wherein I include sex and childbirth), to get the main details out – except, in the case of the OP, I would be explaining that no, none of them were either (a) smiling or (b) breaststroking their way out of my vagina, never mind the two together. (Does Baby need a speech bubble saying “FRREEEEEDOOOMMM!!!”?)
Apparantly it traumatized my ISP because I can’t get it to finish loading.
Love the hairstyles.
I’ll just leave that here.
Here’s a Latvian sex ed comic.
We have “Mummy laid an egg” which got called “the children’s Kamasutra” by my friends. There are problems with that book (heteronormativity, racism), but it’s overall cute.
I’m very much in favour for unexcited everyday sex ed.
PZ
That is awesome.
I can hardly wait for rq’s next comment.
The baby is secretly a wombat.
Ooh, that sounds interesting!!! :-)
I laughed so loud…
…The comments appear to confirm that we now know all the Latvian words for “dick”.
Years ago, when I was a very young sailor in the Navy and had finished a long stint at sea I was entitled to three years of shore duty. I got my orders and learned that I was assigned to the Naval hospital at Pensacola. Yeehaw! Florida! The Gulf Coast! Beaches! Bikinis! New Orleans just down I-10. What a dream assignment. Right?
So, I reported in and was sent straight to the head nurse’s office to learn what my job in the hospital would be. She gave me two options: general surgery or labor & delivery. The first was where all the old retirees went to be operated on (heart disease, cancers of all kinds, bad livers, kidney stones, just to name a few). Many died there. So, I said, L&D it is. The start of life, not the end.
The very next day I came to work, suited up in pink scrubs and waited to be told what to do. The Del Room nurse was no dummy. She wanted to see if I had what it took to work there. She said you’ll just observe at first. Mind you, I’d spent some time with the marines, seen a shit load of stuff while at sea, so I thought how bad can this be? I waited, drank some coffee, chatted with the other corpsmen and women, but nothing much was happening. Piece of cake.
Then, all of a sudden, everything happened at once. We got a call from downstairs. A woman’s water had broken. She was on her way up. Contractions less than 3 minutes part. Prep Del Room 1. Everybody knew what to do. Except me. The nurse directed me where to stand. I had a front row seat. The young woman was wheeled in on a gurney and hustled into the del room. She was moaning. Her husband, a young flight officer, was with her. They got her into the delivery bed, strapped her legs in, got an IV started. Now she was howling. I was not unfamiliar with the female anatomy, rather liked it, but this was far, far different from anything I’d ever experienced before. A wash of betadine and the doctor did that snip-snip-snip. Blood, lots of blood, more screams. The head was crowning. More blood. I was was losing it. I backed up. What had I gotten myself into? The head popped out. A blood curdling yowl. Out came the baby. Cut the cord. Hand the baby to a corpswoman to wash, dry, drops in the eye, footprints. Then came the placenta. Oh, god, what is that, I wondered? This can’t be right. What the fuck is that? Into a tray with it. Then everything was calm and peaceful again. Very quiet. Very organized. Military precision ruled.
The nurse looked over at me. She nodded. I hadn’t fainted. I hadn’t run. I was still able to function. Welcome to the next two years of your life.
Bob Foster
Now imagine being the one who has to push that godsdamn head out…
Unless something really bad is happening and the man is afraid of losing a loved one, my sympathies for the woes of men in the delivery room is nil.
I’m traumatized by the father’s fashion sense. That’s pretty bad, even for the 1970s.
Not remotely traumatizing. It came out shortly after I learned to read and was shelved at our house with the other kids’ nonfiction. It made the very basics of sex ed available to any of the kids who read at our place, and I’m pretty sure at least a few weren’t getting much anywhere else.
Does it have a Russian Reversal?
…that was supposed to be “traumatising”?
I thought it explained things quite appropriately for young school-children.
To make up for the lack of gore, I imagine the “baby” in that picture rasping “I LIVE” in a demonic voice.
@ 22 Trickster Goddess
I get the impression someone’s never seen the Brady Bunch.
http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2012/09/27/parenting-brady-bunch_0.jpg
;-)
I swear that I’ve seen this. I know that my parents didn’t buy it for me, but I saw this somewhere in my youth. For some reason, I think it was a slideshow. Did we have sex-ed some year in the elementary school gifted program, and I don’t remember? The timing’s about right (late 70’s). And we didn’t take any shortcuts when it came to learning anatomy in Ms. Giuliano’s class. Or anything else. I seem to remember a test where we got a point for every element we could name.
Oh, man. I miss Coupling. Jeff was the best. “Oh God! I’ve forgotten how to understand English!”
WTF? It’s $97 from Amazon? That’s an awful lot. I got the Outnumbered and Mighty Boosh sets for that much a couple of months ago. Grrr. Angry, yet so tempted…
Auugh! rq and I commented on this elsewhere, about being almost but not quite able to understand one another’s languages, and how frustrating it can be. Holds true for the written word as well, I’ll say.
The only traumatizing thing about this is the art. It’s awful! It looks like a grade-schooler drew it! If you want a book that’ll REALLY traumatize the little ones, then, as always, you have to go to religion.
This isn’t the first attempt at sex ed for little kids I’ve seen, either. There’s also the infamous “Where Did I Come From?”(NSFW) It starts with the noble intentions of giving kids straight, honest answers about sex so they won’t be surprised later on, but the uncensored nudity and cutesy imagery, with terms like “tickly feeling” and “wriggling” to describe arousal and intercourse, will have you expecting a visit from Chris Hansen just for watching it.
slithey tove @11:
FWIW, the picture isn’t supposed to show a hands-first birth. The text says “then come its arms”, and the page before the one shown by PZ shows the head coming out with no arms visible.
Trickster Goddess @22:
I’m from Denmark, and I think it looks pretty much like what my parents and their friends wear in the photos I’ve seen of them from back then.
“Baby comes out of the vagina head first” is pretty dang informative if you’re someone who doesn’t know anything about the process, which is who this book is written for.
To be quite honest I find these pictures traumatizing not because of the content but because of the horrible art. So much uncanny valley.
Argh, forgot to tag my #32, was directed at stevem @11
Apologies
I wouldn’t call it traumatizing, but it is certainly priceless. I love the doctor’s sideways glance. He looks nervous and puzzled about what’s happening. The symmetry is kind of interesting visually. It also seems misleading (smiling baby) but not something I would not want kids to look at.
You would think that the older you get, the less likely you are to be “traumatized” by anything unusual. But it seems to be the opposite case. Many things adult think are “traumatic” to children are often taken in stride.
The reason is probably because small children have to be taught that something is weird or gross. Unless it’s something that actually harms them, like abuse.
Pretty much anything with any sort of emotional impact geared towards kids will eventually be labeled traumatizing by adults who’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a kid. Don Bluth cartoons, children’s books that explain body functions, etc.
(Not to say any of those things CAN’T be traumatizing, it’s just that adults overestimate it)
Needless to say, I don’t understand Latvian. Based on the cover, I’m guessing it starts something like “When a man and woman love each other enough to drop acid together…”
One other thing about the birth picture that took a while to burble up to consciousness. I am suddenly reminded of Larry Niven’s “puppeteer” aliens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers Though this is nothing quite as gruesome as digger wasps, it does suggest that reproduction involves two sentient males and a non-sentient female.
karley jojohnston
That. Just… that. Little kids have no concept of “weird” until some adult comes along and teaches them.
I, for one, encourage weirdness in children.
That’s funny – my parents gave this book to me when I was a little child. My brother and me found it hilarious – and, no, we were not traumatized at all. :)
The only objection I’d have to showing my son that book is that it doesn’t really portray two of the main bits of how he came into the world (IVF and C-Section) at all…
Marcus
I think there are now a variety of sex ed books around for all kinds of families.
I was always bothered by the heteronormativity in most of them, even if it’s “correct” for the particular case of how our children came to be.
That artwork is so terrible I think it gave me cancer.
paulbc
No, it’s just showing a typical scene from Midsummer’s Eve. [/snark] <- But is it…?
There's a reason the monthly birth rate in Latvia practically doubles every March. :)
Anyway, I know there's a copy of this probably out in the country, or else one of Husband's siblings has it for safekeeping, but I just may have to dig it up and see what that link missed (they say they got most of the pages but are missing some).
But if mummy and daddy really want a baby, then daddy's got to get to sowing!
Also in the Latvian sex-ed for children series, How to have a children. I’m sorry I don’t have time to make subtitles (video). 1991.