SEX ED AND THE MAGICAL UTERUS

This blog entry is in honor of International Women’s Day.

I am a progressive parent, and two of our three children go to Montessori School. When I went to our daughter’s first grade parent/teacher conference and found out that they were going to be learning about reproductive health, I took it in stride. We were given a copy of How You Were Born by Joanna Cole, who is most famous as the author of The Magic School Bus.

They gave us two weeks to read the book with our child, and then the girls would discuss it at school with the female first grade teacher, and the boys would discuss it with the male first grade teacher. This all seemed reasonable.

When I picked up the book, which Parent’s Magazine dubs, “The best book we’ve seen yet on the subject,” I was slightly confused. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I started figuring out where babies came from when I was still wearing Garanimals.

Now if you factor out assisted reproductive technology, there is a penis somewhere in the conception story.

So I decided that I must have missed the penis in the 48-page book. But on a second and then third reading, I never spotted the organ that I was glad to meet somewhere between the Garanimals stage of life, and the push-up bra phase.

I did some research. According to School Library Journal, the original version of the book came out in 1984. By 1993, “the diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems are left out.”

Yes, those minor, unimportant details.

I have moved from confusion to concern. In 2011 we are sophisticated enough to read this with our child,

“You went from the uterus into the vagina, a special tunnel that connects the uterus to the outside. The vagina can stretch wide to let a baby pass through. First your head appeared. Then your whole body came out;” (p 34)

But the only explanation for how the baby got there is,

“In a man’s body are sperm cells. The sperm cells have long tails and can swim. When a sperm and an egg join together, they form a special cell that can grow into a baby.” (19)

Now when my kids ask where the heck the sperm cells are, where is the illustration for that? Why are we comfortable labeling the uterus and vagina, but not the penis? In 2011 women’s bodies are for display, and men’s bodies aren’t?

Joanna Cole leaves the child confused thinking that women are solely responsible for childbirth, and this message isn’t helpful in a political climate that wants to control women’s bodies.

Their effort to control women’s bodies makes sense to me now. We have The Magical Uterus.