How a Family Grows
Shay
1968
This is a photo essay explaining reproduction to kids. This family is expecting a baby and there is a narrative of how this family explains the upcoming birth to the siblings. We featured another of Arthur Shay‘s books about nursing. That book also followed a similar format of following a particular bunch of students as they go through nursing school. They aren’t particularly bad, just outdated.
The first picture below almost had me do a double take. I thought this was some bizarre ice sculpture, and then read the caption about a field trip. I am assuming that the field trip was to a science museum and not some weird cocktail party.
Be sure to take a look at the other photos and text. Unmarried women who have to give their baby up to an orphanage and the selection of babies available for adoption. Note the sad mother saying goodbye to her infant.
Again, the book probably was pretty radical for the time (especially as a book for children). The frank discussion of intercourse, contraception and the photo from the delivery room sets this book ahead of it’s time. Not 50 years ahead, but ahead.
Mary
The picture of his birth is something I don’t think a book in the (school) library I had would’ve had.
I hope no child picks this up and thinks, “Oh, no! Aunt Jane has to give away her baby? I thought she said I was getting a new cousin.”
With today’s politics of competition, even this book’s contents would be manipulated. I recall in high school (Catholic) religion class consisted of limited sex ed: only cisgender heterosex. How children are conceived and with the disclamer: don’t do it! At least they didn’t come out right to say “Abortion is wrong”, but now 40 years later there are “pro-life” groups for the high schoolers and yet JROTC and ROTC are still going strong: natural birth until pro-war natural death….
….which brings me to Jacques Prévert’s poem: In Family
The mother knits, the son is at war
It seems completely natural to the mother
And the father, what does the father do?
He does business
His wife knits
The son is at war
He – business
It seems completely natural to the father
And the son, the son?
What does he think, the son?
Nothing
He doesn’t think anything… the son
The son,
His mother knits
His father does business
He is in the war
When the war is over
He will do business with his father
The war continues, the mother continues knitting
The father continues doing business
The son is killed… he doesn’t continue
The father and the mother go to the cemetery
They find it quite natural, the father and the mother
Life goes on,
Life knitting, war, business
Business, business, business
Life… with the cemetery.
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/familiale-family.html