We did the full works. Us girls had a âperiod productsâ talk in year 6 (I dunno if boys got an equivalent talk about erections and wet dreams and the like). We did the biology of the reproductive parts and mechanics of sex and how babies are made in year 7, I think? Maybe year 8. Then in year 9 we had a couple day long âeventâ focusing on safe sex, different religions views on sex/sex before marriage, a session where we could write anonymous questions for a female teacher could answer (if there was anything we were too embarrassed to ask individually or out loud).
Parents could return a form to remove us from the biology stuff in year 7/8. Possibly the safe sex stuff in year 9. But I donât think anyone was withdrawn. I think most parents are happy for the school to deal with the subject in general. And I think by now (Iâm a millennial so we were born in the late 80s to parents probably born in the 50s-70s), most parents would have been brought up having had a similar educational experience (except possibly for private religious schools) so are happy for their kids to have the same. Whereas our parents were more from the generation of âwe donât talk about sex or sex ed or about pregnancy or how to get pregnantâ, so maybe wanted more for their kids, or felt too awkward covering those topics themselves?
I do, however, recommend watching, and yes I keep recommending it, Call The Midwife, which is set in the East End of London in a very poor area, from the mid 50s to the start of the 70s. It follows, as the title suggests, midwives (who are also nurses and do district nursing too) who deal with (to start with in the 50s), 95% of the midwifery work of the district, with only those who are decided to need hospital care (which is usually C-Sections, especially emergency ones), but usually the midwives attend to the early stages of labour, and the local GP is called to attend, and only then do the women get referred/sent to the hospital. And sex education, or a lack there of, is often commented upon, as well as a general lack of options for safe sex for a woman, with the most accessible being to convince their husbands/clients to use condoms. With their responses being that if they try denying them if they wonât use one, the men will just find someone else who wonât insist. A lot of older women say they were never taught all the correct words for their private area, just âdown thereâ, âyour privatesâ, âyour whatsitâ. And thereâs several cases involving girls who lack any sort of sex ed and the consequences of that ignorance. Usually sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy. As well as older women, with issues around their reproductive systems who lack the right words to refer to their parts and what exactly is wrong, or that anything can be done to help (especially now on the NHS), and one woman even states what home made things she uses, and what she knows of other women using to deal with the same problem. Meaning that these issues affect a lot of women, who just believe itâs a natural result of being older women, whoâve had multiple pregnancies and multiple births. Which, with a lack of any sort of way to control pregnancies, meant that large families, or large numbers of pregnancies were common, if a woman couldnât access proper medical care pre-NHS, meaning that a lot of those pregnancies could result in high numbers stillborns, miscarriages, and babies dead within their first year.
Sister Monica Joan makes a comment about âwhen did babies became so cherished, they used to play in open sewers, was it when they survived more often or when women were slowly able to stop having so many, so were more precious due to the relative scarcity?â
