Why Sex Ed Is Important
I had kind of a weird experience yesterday and I’m trying to figure out why it was weird and what I could have done differently to make it not weird. Also, I don’t think anyone but me even took note of it. I was in a group of people yesterday and someone asked another person in the group if they wanted to have kids. The person being asked has been married for a while but both he and his wife are in school. He responded emphatically that yes eventually they want to have kids. Now, I know this guy is early 30’s, but I had no idea how old his wife is. My mind immediately started racing. I wondered if they knew much about fertility and how it declines every year and practically drops off a cliff in your 30’s. I doubted they knew this information, most people don’t. I wondered if I had a responsibility to tell them what I know? I wondered if that was too invasive into their personal life. It would have been very out of context for the group I was in. But I couldn’t get my mind off of it. I was pretty emotionally wrapped up in this guy saying eventually he wants to have kids and wondering if his wife has thought about freezing her eggs. This internal debate lasted about 10 minutes and I finally asked how old his wife is. He said 30 and I asked if they knew much about how fertility declines in your 30’s. He said no. I finally said it was something to know and be educated about and left it at that.
This interaction made me ponder about how socially acceptable it is to give advice like that. I mean, looking back if someone would have said that to me 10 years ago, I would have brushed it off because I wasn’t in a place to even consider it. On the other hand though, knowing what I know now, I wish that reproductive health was a more talked about topic. I wish it wasn’t so hush hush and yet I hush hushed it yesterday because I was worried I’d bring the vibe down. No one wants to be a party killer by talking about reproductive health right?
Reproductive health should be common knowledge. Yesterday I said something like ‘It kinda sucks that the only people who know about fertility decline is the people who are going through infertility, we should know about this earlier in life’. And that is how I truly feel. It kind of sucks that you realize it’s a problem when you really can’t do anything to change it. If everyone knew about fertility and reproductive health, then maybe there would be fewer couples struggling with it, because they would have done some of the work to improve fertility chances (like freezing eggs) earlier in life.
I’m going to say some controversial statements but no one reads this so it’s ok. Sex Ed in school should be renamed reproductive and fertility health. We need to spend more time educating kids on how the reproductive system actually works (hormones, getting pregnant, miscarriage, infertility) and less time on how to NOT get pregnant. I don’t expect a kid to actually remember any of that stuff in later years, but they might remember that they learned something about hormones and it gives them a base of knowledge. I grew up in an abstinence only family. I think the logic was if I just didn’t know anything then I couldn’t get pregnant. Well…turns out I can’t get pregnant and I know a lot. So knowledge, or lack of knowledge, has NOTHING to do with getting pregnant. Saying ‘just don’t have sex’ is not education, it’s a life choice. Meaning, you can have the values of abstinence, but that does not mean you should be ignorant. I have really shied away from speaking about what should or shouldn’t be taught in schools because the response I get from people is ‘well you don’t have kids, if you did, you’d understand.’ That response is 1) hurtful and 2) false. I was a kid. I missed out on a lot of important education. I see what my friends kids are being taught and I see gaps. I might not know how to operate in the school system (who to talk to about what) but I have eyes in my head just as much as you do. I see problems. I’m just not as emotionally invested in one particular child’s education as you are because it isn’t my child. In a way, I have a better view of the schools because I’m not as biased.
My hope is that I can figure out a way to talk about reproductive health and awareness without being a mood killer. I also don’t want to be known as that person who always talks about that subject no one cares about.
