Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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How Times Have Changed

With the documentaries and informative programs on television, and the sex education classes in the high schools, there is not much left to the imagination of our younger generation as to how babies are conceived. This information was not readily available when I was growing up in the 1930s and 1940s. Oh, of course, the older kids were always ready to share ther own versions of how it happened.

Being a very curious teenager, I had figured out the process on my own. Being raised on the farm, I had the opportunity to observe all sorts of mating procedures.

The rooster would "top" the hens, and the eggs that the hens produced were referred to as "fertile," which simply meant that they would hatch into baby chicks when a hen sat on them for a period of several weeks. If there was no rooster, the eggs would be infertile and would not hatch. Mother watched the hens closely to see when they were ready to sit on the eggs. They would simply sit on a nest of eggs that they and other hens had laid, and would refuse to get off the nest. You could reach under them and remove the fresh-laid eggs, but they would stay with their clutch of eggs until they were hatched a few weeks later. It was such a thrill to see the hen come off the nest with her baby chicks.

Dad always had a sow pig and a boar. He would tell Mother quietly that the boar had "done his duty" and that the sow was expecting piglets. They would arrive several months later.

Dad and Mother would talk in low voices about the cow being "in season." I would watch as Dad would tie a rope around our cow's neck and lead her away to a neighbor's farm. The neighbor had a bull. Later Dad would bring her back. Then, nine months later, the cow would have a calf.

So I figured out that it took a male and a female to make a baby of their own kind.

I asked Mom why it took the cow longer to have a calf than it took the sow to have piglets, and she told me that the bigger the animal was, the longer it took for the baby to develop. That made sense.

On Sundays after lunch at Granny and Grandad's, the men played dominoes and the women would gather in another room and talk. Sometimes they would talk about some young woman who was "in the family way," and comment on the fact that she had not even been married nine months. There was the "nine months" time limit again.

Now I had another piece of the puzzle.

Since the female animal had to be "in season," I assumed that the female of the species was the one who instigated the whole thing. If she wanted an offspring, she merely enticed the male, and he impregnated her. Then, nine months later, the female had a baby. Simple, huh? I even went further in my calculations. Since my Mother and Dad at that time had only two children, I was sure that they had only had sex twice in their married life--and that was all! I was greatly embarrassed when my little brother was born the year I was twelve. How could my Mother have seduced my Dad at their ages? The nerve!

At the age of sixteen, I married. When my husband made what I considered to be improper advances to me on our wedding night, I was appalled! I told him, "I'm not going to have a baby nine months after we are married and have people talking about us!" When he assured me that there were ways to prevent that, I said, "You've got to be kidding." At any rate, I would not give in until the second night we were married. To have a baby nine months and one day after you married was O.K. As it happened, we did not have a baby for over two years.

Several years later my sister and I attended a shower for a friend of ours. Our mother was also at the shower. When the young mother-to-be said that she had not known what she was getting into when she got married, my mother spoke up and said, "Neither did I, so that is why I had a talk with my girls before they married and made sure they knew." My sister and I both looked at Mother in surprise.

I said, "Mother, I don't remember you ever having 'the talk' with me."

She said, "Well, I do."

I persisted, "When did you talk to me, Mom? I really don't remember it."

Mom, red-faced and with her head hanging down, said, "I remember it well. I had been too embarrassed to discuss the subject with you, and your Dad kept after me to talk to you. So I finally decided that the time had come. You were at the front door ready to leave with your husband-to-be to go to the preacher's to be married, and I called you to come back into the kitchen with me. That's where I told you."

"But, Mom, what did you say?"

"I said, 'What hasn't been all right before is all right now.' It worked so well with you that I told your sister the same way just before she left to get married."

Lowell McCormack
Gainesville, Texas
Published: November 14, 2005