THE NEXT GENERATION
Every generation of mothers wants to feel that they are doing a more enlightened job of child rearing than those before them. I was no different in 1958 and declared that when my child came asking me about the facts of life, I wouldn't take the easy way out by invoking "the stork." No, siree, I had read my childcare book, which told how to answer those delicate questions in a simple, straightforward manner. I was all primed when Mike asked me at age five, standing beside me on the seat of the 1951 black Chevrolet while we were driving from the Sligo Gasoline Plant. "The mother has a little egg in her stomach and the daddy fertilizes it," I remember saying, "and a little baby grows."
Mike digested these facts silently for a minute, then he asked, "Where does the daddy get the fertilizer?"
More of Betty's early childhood memories are given in the Nostalgia section for the 1930s.