Parents would rather their children asked them where babies come from than why the sky is blue, according to an international poll published last week.

Hah! How very, very true. My daughter woke up the other day, declaring that she fancied going on a boat. As I am only a mere white-collared worker, and not a berth-owner at Portomaso, the only boat I have access to is the Sliema ferry. And quite a three-euro bargain return trip to Valletta, it is.

Throughout the ride, my daughter kept staring at the bottom of the sea and asking a million questions: “Mum, what’s under the ground of the sea?” “It’s the bottom, it’s sometimes sandy and sometimes rocky,” I said in my teacher’s voice, specially reserved for these moments.

“Yes, but what’s under the rocks?” she asked again with a certain impatience implying a ‘Duh!’ “Well, um, more rocks,” I said.

“But what’s under the more rocks?” she insisted. “Hmm, erm.” I desperately flick through my mental archives. Unfortunately, what keeps coming to mind is my Ladybird book of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Not what I needed, to be sure.

What’s the answer? Balls of fire? I feel her expectant look boring into me and I feel the pressure to deliver as if I’m on The Weakest Link. Then, I’m saved: “Ok, Mamà, look it up on the internet and tell us.”

As the poll suggests, I am one of those one-in-five parents who break in a sweat when asked a science-based question. The poll, which was hosted on the Mumsnet website, reveals that 29 per cent would not know how to answer if their child asked them: “Why is the sky blue?” When my daughter asked me that question, to my shame, I cheated: I turned it into a lecture on why the sea is blue.

So what’s the answer to blue sky? I googled it and got different versions of this: “A clear cloudless daytime sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. This scattering effect is known as Rayleigh scattering. Because the blue light is scattered in random directions, some of it reaches the planet surface, where we see it.”

Oh, right. Not. Words like ‘molecules’ and ‘Rayleigh’ jump out at me and plunge me straight to the days of yore when I sat totally clueless, for chemistry lessons. And how on earth am I going to explain it, if I, erm, barely get it myself?

Children’s questions really make you aware of your sheer lack of all-round knowledge. The other day, I opened the bonnet to fill in the windscreen washer tank. I could see my daughter’s eyes growing wider: “What’s that?” she pointed. I told her that it’s the radiator (it’s written on it, that’s how I know). “What does it do?”, “What’s this?”, “And that?”, “And that thing over there?”

I huffed. “Honestly, Pip. I have absolutely no clue. All I know is that this is the bonnet and this is the wiper bottle which we need to fill otherwise we’ll need the knife to crack the dirt on our windscreen.” Which, of course, then led to a barrage of other questions, namely “What is dirt?” and “What is the air made up of?”

It is therefore not surprising that only one per cent of the parents interviewed in the poll said they would be stumped if asked where do babies come from. Because compared with the above it’s easy.

In case you’re part of that one per cent, I can here recommend a brilliant and hilarious book called Where Willy Went by Nicholas Allan. Willy, in case you’re wondering, is a sperm and an ace swimmer, constantly training for The Day of the Great Race. You get the gist.

It’s ironic that we get stuck on questions like ‘Why is water wet?’ or ‘What makes waves?’ or ‘When do octopuses squirt ink?’, which only require straightforward facts as answers, but then we sail through complex delicate matters.

I barely stammer when Pippa asks questions on marriage, separation, falling in love, falling out of love and different family combinations. Does this mean I should start swotting on science text books? Perhaps.

At least, so far, religion related-queries have been very mild. Pippa, I suspect, thinks of God as the ‘Head of Fairyland’. The other day, after endless grumbling from my end because we were stuck in traffic, she said: “I’m going to ask God why there’s traffic and if he can make it go away.”

And you know what? In the blink of an eyelid the traffic cleared. God is definitely much better at answering children’s questions than I am.

krischetcuti@gmail.com