Thandie Newton has a beautiful way of explaining sex to her children. Sit down and learn something, kiddos.
What I might say, as a great mom, is: “My child, humans have reproductive parts that interact with each other and fit—like a puzzle!—and for a variety of reasons, these organs come together for the sake of pleasure and/or to produce tiny humans like yourself... The body is weird.”
But Newton explained the process much better in a cover story for The Edit, where the Westworld star recalled having the sex talk with her now 16-year-old daughter Ripley a few years ago:
“I said, ‘Daddy has a beautiful penis, which enters Mama, and these two precious parts of us join together...’ A few days later, Ripley came home from school, saying, ‘Mummy, I had to tell Don he was wrong today. Don said sex is when a man makes his willy go really hard and then beats the woman with it’...Lucky I got to her first.”
More seriously, Newton also had a recent talk with her 12-year-old son Nico and Ripley about being abused by an older director when she was 16. “I told them that the first time I ever had any sexual encounter, it was abuse,” she says. “Eventually, my 12-year-old stopped me and said, ‘Mum, don’t worry. I am way cooler than you were at my age.’”
DISCUSSION
I’m very pregnant, and my kid (3.5 years old) knows that there’s a baby in Mommy’s tummy that’s going to come out soon. But the other day he asked me, out of nowhere, with a comedically furrowed toddler brow, “Mommy, how did the baby get IN your tummy?”
It took me a moment to collect myself and say “Mommy and Daddy put it there together.”
Hoping I get another 3.5 years or so to figure out how I’m going to explain the mechanics of the putting.
ETA: before anyone else replies gently suggesting that I don’t have the temperament to discuss these matters with my child, please just don’t. I just... didn’t expect it so soon. We’ll all be fine, I promise.