Where do babies come from?

I was thinking a lot in class about something, and I never really found a good time to mention it. In talking about benevolent lies and the like, I was debating things such as the stork, Santa Clause, and the Easter Bunny. When any decent parent hear's the dreadful question "Where do babies come from?" from their child, the truth is generally the last thing they want to discuss. Ideally the child never asks and the parent can avoid lying. However, if the child does ask, many feel it is inappropriate to explain the science of sex to a young girl or boy. There are things that are inappropriate for children in the eyes of society, and when brought up, I think common sense morality tells us to avoid the truth in answering the question. Furthermore, there are childhood issues such as the belief in Santa Clause. I realize there are mixed feelings about this, but most don't criticize parents for taking their child to sit on Santa's lap and pretending to mail their childs letters to the North Pole or drinking the milk and eating the cookies left for Santa. In defense of telling the truth in class, we discussed how sometimes withholding the truth is like treating someone as if they're a little kid. What about little kids? Is it OK to treat them as such? Depending on the child, finding out Santa Clause isn't real can be traumatic and maybe telling them from the start would have been better. However, for some children that belief as a kid promotes good behavior (to avoid the naughty list), hope, faith, belief, imagination, etc. As far as discussing where babies come from, I think it may be more traumatic to tell the truth to a child than any lie. Parents lie to their children in these ways because children are not ready for the truth. They are not old enough, mature enough to handle the truth. Let's try the arguments Hill has now. Do parects stunt the growth of their child's psychological capacity for autonomy? Personally I feel that these lies and discovering the truth is part of the growth process. In certain cases the truth could stunt their psychological growth. As far as autonomy, should children really be full in charge of their autonomy to begin with? If given complete freedom and autonomy, children would probably eat nothing but sugar, go to bed real late, and beat up on their siblings more than they already do. There's a reason children aren't given full freedom, and I think part of that is sometimes withholding truth until a child is old enough to handle it with the proper maturity. Autonomy as a right argues that you remove important life choices. I don't really know what important life choices a child makes, but I feel there's nothing too harmful there. As far as distinct human values I think children do want comfort over all else. They pretty much know happy and sad, and they generally prefer happy. Lastly, maybe it does deprive them of a realistic picture of their life, but in a few years they get it back. Further, how realistic is a child's picture of their life to begin with? Their understanding is far below that of an adult. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't agree with most lying, benevolent or not, and I do agree that parents should be honest with their children as much as possible, but there are certain cases where benevolent lies to children can be beneficial or at least harmless.