Where Do Babies Come From?
Kids always want to know how things work. When they ask their parents where babies come from, they typically get a fumbled explanation of seeds and flowers, a plumbing lesson, or the timeless, “The stork brought you.”
Some say the notion of babies brought by storks began in ancient Greece
As the story goes, a vengeful goddess grew jealous of a rival and punished her by turning her into a stork*. Unwilling to leave her infant child behind, the stork wrapped it in a blanket and flew away with the baby in her beak. Thus was born the idea that babies were delivered by storks.
*Ornithologists argue that the delivery birds were not storks, but cranes, herons, or other large birds that fed on fish by spearing their prey with long pointy beaks. They probably were cranes at first, but morphed into storks somewhere along the way.
Aesop is credited by many as the inventor of fables
In his day, Greeks were described as being created by a god that was half-asleep, which is why Aesop was described as being “of loathsome aspect … potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped — a portentous monstrosity,” and “a bearded hunchback with an intellectual appearance,” more things they never told us in school.
Aesop wrote two fables about storks
The moral of The Fox and the Stork was don’t play tricks on your neighbors unless you can stand the same treatment yourself.
The moral of The Farmer and the Stork was associating with bad companions will lead to bad consequences. Those morals sound like today’s Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and Birds of a feather flock together.
A few thousand years later, along came Hans Christian Andersen
Andersen was a Dane who wrote fairytales. One in particular, Storks, was a tale about children who teased and mocked four little storks in the nest, singing a song that included these lyrics:
“The first he will be hanged, the second will be stabbed, the third he will be burned, And the fourth will be slapped!”
When they grew into young adults, the storks got even with a plan hatched by Mrs. Stork.
“Go to the pond where all little human babies lie dreaming,” she said, “pick one up and deliver it to the children who did not tease and mock them. Then pick up a dead baby and deliver it to the little instigator that started the taunting.”
The Aesop and Anderson tales gave parents an easy answer to the question many were unable to explain or too embarrassed to talk about.
Others say the stork story was driven by the seasons of nature
In northern Europe, summer was the time to harvest the crops. This temporary lull was the time of fertility festivals and a popular time to get married. Summer was also the time storks migrated back to Africa from their winter homes in Europe. The same storks returned from Africa in the spring to lay their eggs. These hatched into chicks at about the same time the summer-conceived children were born. Remember, this was hundreds of years ago, when superstition clobbered science.
This version of the stork story seemed logical: summer marriages = spring babies
These simple medieval people observed the correlation between the arrival of storks and babies and concluded causation, as many people still do today.
As is the case with many stories, not just folklore, more details were added, such as the storks being monogamous (not true). Storks did return to the same nests each year, and if you can’t tell one stork from another, it’s easy to conclude it was the same pair of parents.
The Stork Club
This Manhattan landmark was one of the most prestigious nightclubs in the world. It was patronized by glamorous, wealthy elites, celebrities, playwrights, actors, showgirls, aristocrats, and visiting royalty. When asked why it was called The Stork Club, the owner said “Don’t ask me how or why I picked the name, because I just don’t remember.”
Why did the Vlasic pickle people choose a stork as their spokesbird?
The Vlasic stork first appeared in 1974, spoke like Groucho Marx, and delivered pickles instead of babies. It was Vlasic’s way of capitalizing on the commonly-held belief that pregnant women crave pickles. Prior to the spokestork, Vlasic and Heinz each had about 10 percent of the pickle market. When the bird stepped in, Vlasic’s market share quickly grew to 25 percent.
Pickle jars are hard to open
Unless you know how to soundly rap the lid four or five times with the back of a table knife, breaking the vaccuum seal.
Bonus
- When storks nested on a roof of a house, people saw that as good luck and a sign that babies would be born to those living in the home.
- Over time, the blankets storks carried babies in evolved into cloth diapers, the way the stork delivery system is portrayed today.
- Another myth said babies are found under cabbages — hence the Cabbage Patch Kids franchise.
- Did you know that some people refer to birthmarks as stork bites?
And now you know where babies come from — a pond.
