Alec Baldwin's Daughter Is A Little Confused About Where Babies Come From

One of the many, many lessons that we've learned from movies and TV is that parents dread the day they hear five little words from their child's mouth, "where do babies come from?"

Instead of asking that question, though, three-year-old Carmen Baldwin — the daughter of Alec and Hilaria Baldwin — came up with her own theory.

Hilaria Baldwin posted a photo of her daughter on Instagram, posing with a baby doll under her dress to make a fake baby bump. This, her mother wrote, was her solution to getting the little sister she desperately wants.

"Carmen has been begging for a baby sister," Baldwin wrote. "She finally got fed up and shoved a baby doll up her dress, telling me she will have the baby for me. But I'm the mommy and she is the big sister."

While there technically isn't anything wrong with that logic — surrogates carry babies that aren't biologically theirs all the time — Carmen's theory about how pregnancy works went a little deeper, and wildly off-track.

"She also told me that the mommy swallows the baby to get in the tummy then the baby hatches out of its shell," Baldwin wrote.

We hope we don't have to tell you that this is NOT how it works.

Still, the typical TV and movie response of "when a mommy and a daddy fall in love..." isn't exactly accurate either — at least, not always. There are many different ways a baby could become part of a family including surrogacy, adoption, fostering, and IVF. And not all babies are even born to a mommy. Some are born to non-binary people or to transgender men. At least one baby has been conceived with the DNA from three different parents.

So, while there will probably never be a day when human babies hatch out of shells, making a baby isn't quite as simple as many people think.

Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.

[H/T: HelloGiggles]