The birds and the bees

"The birds and the bees" is an English-language idiomatic expression that refers to courtship and sexual intercourse, and is usually used in reference to teaching someone, often a young child, about sex and pregnancy. The phrase is evocative of the metaphors and euphemisms often used to avoid speaking openly and technically about the subject.

According to tradition, the birds and the bees is a metaphorical story sometimes told to children in an attempt to explain the mechanics and good consequences of sexual intercourse through reference to easily observed natural events. For instance, bees carry and deposit pollen into flowers, a visible and easy-to-explain example of male fertilisation. Another example, birds lay eggs, a similarly visible and easy-to-explain example of female ovulation.

Possible origins

Word sleuths William and Mary Morris^[1] hint that it may have been inspired by words like these from the poet Samuel Coleridge (1825): 'All nature seems at work ... The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing ... and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.'"^[2]

Several sources give credit to Cole Porter for coining the phrase.^[3] One of the musician's more famous songs was "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love." In Porter's publication from 1928, the opening line for the chorus carried derogatory racial references like Chinks and Japs, later changed following CBS recommendation and NBC adaptation:^[4]

And that's why birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

Even earlier instances of this idiomatic expression appear in the Cavalier poet, Thomas Carew's (pronounced Carey) work, "The Spring" (c.1640), in which, Carew uses earth and its change of seasons as a metaphorical depiction of women and their sensuality (The Norton Anthology of English Literature 1696).^[5] To abet his ends, Carew alludes to the "birds in the bees" in lines 7-8 with the use of "swallow", "cuckoo", and "humble-bee" as seen here (lines included are 5-8): "But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth/And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth/To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree/The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee/Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring" (emphasis added; lines 5-9 from "The Spring").^[6]

Usages and popular culture

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Famous uses of this phrase come from the work of John Burroughs, a naturalist who lived and worked in the Catskill Mountains. He wrote a small pamphlet called "Birds and Bees: Essays"^[7] in which he explained the workings of nature in a way that children could understand.

Several books have been created to help parents, educators, and other adults demystify the birds and the bees to children. Robie Harris specializes in children's books with a biological approach to reproduction, with works such as "IT’S NOT THE STORK! A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families, and Friends"^[8] and It's So Amazing A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families.^[9]. The Bird and The Bee is a duet group.

See also

• Sexual reproduction

References