CCTV recently conducted a street poll asking 200 children in various cities to tell the interviewer where they believed they "came from," as in how they were conceived and born.

The most popular answer was that they were "picked out of a trash can" by their parents. The survey aroused heated discussion online because the answers appeared to mirror the same tales that older generations in China commonly told their children about the facts of life. So it appears there has been very little development in the field of sex education over many years.

The Shanghai Morning Post followed up the survey and asked about a dozen of parents in the city about this subject. Their investigation revealed that parents born after 1980 appear to be more open-minded about this subject than those born before 1980. Experts say that children start to become curious about their origins from the age of about 3.

Quite a few of the parents expressed a willingness to tell their children the biological facts about sex, conception, pregnancy and birth, while others admitted they would feel awkward discussing such things and would continue to tell "white lies," such as "we won you as a prize in a supermarket offer."

Sex education has long been a contentious issue, and not just in Chinese society. Many young parents puzzle over how much to tell children, and whether to tell them anything at all.

But let's overlook the outright deception involved in telling so-called white lies. Telling a child they were found in a trash can isn't going to do much for their self-esteem as they are growing up. And that's even if they don't deduce the next logical step in such a fairy tale whereby their "real" parents must have obviously dumped them in said trash can. And when they do find out the truth? Well, the lesson they will learn is that it is okay to tell lies and to trick people. After all, if adults do it, it must be okay, right?

Some of my friends, however, learnt the biological facts of life from observing the behavior of their pets such as turtles and rabbits. They told me their parents explained to them the processes behind the pregnancies and births of these animals, and made a general allusion to the fact that humans weren't that much different.

Something similar happened to me as a child. I remember when I was in kindergarten in the 1980s, my teacher told us about how flower seeds pollinate and then extended this metaphor to imply that something similar happened in humans.

But I honestly felt that such an explanation was enough for me at this age, and I don't believe that very young children need to be told the whole truth about the sexual facts of life. I think it is enough to tell them that when a man and woman fall in love, pregnancy and a birth will often soon follow. There is plenty of time for them to fill in the actual details later.

Saying that, I think that more age-appropriate teaching materials should be available in schools to make this subject more approachable for teachers.

Illustration: Chen Xia/GT