Skąd się biorą dzieci? Jak przyszli nauczyciele deklarują wyjaśnianie problemu dzieciom

Abstrakt

The aim of the study was to determine the opinions of pedagogy students, future teachers, on the difficult issue of talking to children about where babies come from. We know from previous studies that children’s knowledge of this process is very limited and boils down to selective information from which they form naive beliefs. They need the support of adults who will teach them to name intimate parts of the body, talk about feelings and provide knowledge about how children are born. The problem is that many adults (parents and teachers) avoid this topic when talking to children. The study attempted to determine how future teachers would behave in a situation where a child asks where babies come from, how they would react to vulgar names for sexual organs, when and under what conditions they would be able to tell children about their origins, and what ‘telling the truth’ about the process of childbirth means to them. The research showed that students feel a greater need to explain to children where they come from than practising teachers, but at the same time, many of them consider the medical names for sexual organs to be vulgar. When talking to children about their origins, future teachers would only tell preschoolers about the relationship that led to their conception, omitting the biological processes. However, they would supplement their explanations with biological details when talking to 9–10-year-olds.