As Rush commented yesterday, It takes a village to create a child!
As I read, I was also thinking of "The Kinsey Reports" and all their (later determined/found out) falsities and outright manipulation of events and data. And yet, it is quoted and used as justification for 'free love', pedophilia, etc.
Another thing has to do with sperm.....partly with the idea that a 'backwoods' woman thinks a guy sings good so she's gonna mix his sperm in with a guy who is a good hunter, another who is tall, another who is handsome.....and she has no idea of the concept that only one sperm makes the egg fertile.
And then the quantity of male sperm.....back in the mid 80s, Gene took a class on artificial insemination because we wanted to upgrade our cattle by using sperm from bulls we never could have afforded to own. One of the articles I read included the fact that a single ejaculation by a bull provided enough sperm to impregnate every single cow on earth on the basis that it only takes one sperm to penetrate the egg. That said, they never just put a single sperm in a vial to be used for artificial insemination....there are thousands, because they all don't get there.
BTW, the zinna flowers Valerie posted the picture of remind me of my Grandmother Taylor so much...she really had a green thumb, or hand really. And I can recall one whole area near a corner curb where she planted what seemed like thousands of zinnas....it was such a colorful corner to drive by.