Why is it called The birds and bees?
The phrase he birds and the bees is a common euphemism that refers to the awkward task of parents explaining sex to young children. Since birds and bees, as well as sex, are found in nature, the term has been referred to as love, sex, and reproduction in many types of media.
Early use of the term
Bees do it.
Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Brigitte Whack
William and Mary Morris credit the poet Samuel Coleridge in his poem, Hopeless Labour with the first analogy of birds and bees with sex or mating in their 1967 reference book,Morris's Dictionary of Words and Phrases Origins. (Reference 1All nature seems to be at work.... The bees are stirring, the birds are flying.... And I at the same time, the only pure thing not to make honey, nor mate, nor build, nor sing.
Later connections
In 1928, jazz musician Cole Porter made the song Let's Do It popular. The words, Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let's do it, let's fall in love make the connection between humans, birds and bees even more explicit.
Explicit use
Michael Quinion says on his website World Wide Words (Reference 2) that in 1939, the Freeport Norma Newspaper said: A Frenchman was born sophisticated: he knows about birds and bees. Consequently, French cinema is made on a basis of artistic understanding that does not hinder history.
Uncomfortable subject
The task of explaining the facts of life to children is often still linked to this universally coined term the birds and the bees. Children today, too, use the term doing it when referring to the act of having sex.
Speculation
Birds and bees are common to every child in the world. Perhaps that is why these animals were chosen to provide the link between human sexuality and the animal world long ago.
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