How is babby is formed, 1980s edition

August 8, 2015 2:07 AM

"When a Mummy and a Daddy love each other very much..." is the default amusing quote for pretending to explain the facts of life to children. It is enough of a meme it must come from somewhere. But where?

I thought it might be from "Where Did I Come From" or the various dubbed video versions versions of it, but I don't think it quite matches up (having reached critical levels of cringe looking at the videos!)

posted by slightlybewildered to Society & Culture (15 answers total)

I think it must be from "where did I come from". I had that book and im sure that came before the stuff about sex being like a big sneeze.

I dont remember the line being exactly as you quoted it though so perhaps its just been changed a bit over the years.

I'd check but not sure where my copy went, must be at my mum's house but I haven't seen it in years.
posted by kitten magic at 4:10 AM on August 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: For me the main connotation of that phrase is Blackadder, which is a 1980s series. Here's a link to the script for that episode. But I don't know if that is referring to something else. And (assuming you're in the US) I don't know in which direction across the Atlantic it travelled, if any.
posted by altolinguistic at 7:27 AM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

It doesn't come from "Where Did I Come From" as I just flipped through my copy. They don't say much about love other than the man and the woman feel "very loving" toward each other. I feel like it could easily have origins in some 1950s era sex education film.
posted by amanda at 8:03 AM on August 8, 2015

Orgasm is described as being like a sneeze in WDICF, not intercourse.
posted by brujita at 8:33 AM on August 8, 2015

I remember the "When a man and a woman love each other" being the opening line of either the Sex or Intercourse articles from the World Book Encyclopedia in all of my early-'80s classrooms. An anecdatapoint.
posted by riverlife at 10:10 AM on August 8, 2015

I think I first saw this on an old TV show about a single father trying to answer this question when one of the kids asks and dad does not want to have a discussion about sex. I don't think it was "The courtship of Eddie's father." The image I have in my head is of a fairer (coloring wise) man, maybe red headed or a light brunet, and he had a little girl and little boy and I think the mom had died. The kid asks at the beginning of the show and it takes the whole show to sort out how to answer it and whether or not to get into the sex part.

I graduated high school in 1983. So it would fit that some earlier show started this and the line got popularized as we hit adolescence and everyone began repeating it, possibly somewhat mockingly.

I have tried to do some searching. I haven't found anything that looks like a match.
posted by Michele in California at 10:35 AM on August 8, 2015

Best answer: The earliest version I could find on Google Books was from the Journal of Social Hygiene in 1935 (sadly only available in "snippet view"), though it refers primarily to marriage: "When a man and a woman love each other very much and they decide that they would like to have a little home and live together always and have some children, they get married."

The next earliest in Google Books is from 1949 in a book called Sex in Social Life, but in this case it's an addendum to an actual explanation of conception: "It should only take place when a man and a woman love each other very much and have married and decided to spend the rest of their lives together."

Both seem to be presented (as far as I can tell from snippet view) as sincere examples of what you can tell children about marriage and sex, but I don't know if the phrase originated in 1935 or just happened to show up in print (that Google knows about) then.
posted by Aster at 11:36 AM on August 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think it's been a meme so far back that it was taught to us by our parents (depending on your age). My mom used that precise phrase in the earlier 90s when I got "the talk"; she was about 40 at the time.
posted by amaire at 1:01 PM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I believe it's "How Babies Are Made" originally published in 1968, and this quote from Google Books agrees with me.
posted by unknowncommand at 3:24 PM on August 8, 2015

I also thought it was "How Babies Are Made", but the "human sex" page has different words.
posted by belladonna at 5:59 PM on August 8, 2015

Interesting! I wonder what the page before says?
posted by unknowncommand at 8:35 PM on August 8, 2015

I agree with amaire; it was already very widely diffused by the 1980s and didn't come from a single source in that period, but already existed in countless permutations. Aster's 1935 find is great, and aligns with the socially and educationally progressive bent of that decade to frame procreation in the context of romantic love (I don't think you'd have found that much earlier, historically speaking).
posted by Miko at 8:55 PM on August 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

How a Baby Is Made is from 1975, and has 'Here are the baby's mother and father. They love each other very much. They have helped each other to have the baby.' I wonder if it might be a paraphrase from there. Scans at the link.
posted by escapepod at 6:26 AM on August 9, 2015

Michele in California: that show sounds like it could be Family Affair with Brian Keith and Sebastian Cabot. Uncle Bill was always having very poignant conversations with the two little red-headed twins after their parents died.
posted by CathyG at 7:12 AM on August 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here's a video clip of that scene from the episode The Birds and the Bees and Buffy. It doesn't use those exact words, but it's close.
posted by CathyG at 7:21 AM on August 9, 2015 [1 favorite]