So Gaia gave their son, Kronos, a sickle which he used to slice off Uranus’s phallus from his mother’s body to allow the birth of all the titans. He attempted to stop this by having perpetual intercourse with Gaia in order to stop their offspring from leaving her body. Uranus was afraid that the Titans would want to marry their mother, like he did, and overthrow him. Uranus with his mother Gaia then further produced three monstrous giants, the Hecatonchieres. She also bore him the Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. The Titans were not the only offsprings Gaia had with her son, Uranus. In some versions, one of their daughters, Rhea coupled with the young Zeus, Rhea's youngest son. In Greek mythology, Gaia (earth) had 12 children with her own son Uranus (sky). Often from sexual unions with their son-husbands, some goddesses bore numerous offspring. In this pattern, the Mother, like a goddess of fertility, was often accompanied by a young male deity who was both her son and later her husband after his father's demise: Astaroth with Tammuz, Kybele with Attis, etc.
The pattern of a mother-goddess coupling with a young male deity was widespread in the entire pre-Aryan and pre-Semitic cultural zone of Orient from southwest Asia to the eastern Mediterranean.