Denianne Gardner
I didn’t think it was possible for a person to be less informed about their own body than my adolescent self. She was a mess. The full extent of my puberty education consisted of a gloriously 1980s video in catholic school health class, where a mother demonstrated her knowledge of female reproductive anatomy for her daughter using pancake batter. I learned a lot … about pancakes.
Being the youngest of four girls, my adults assumed my sisters schooled me on all the secrets of womanhood, like how new puppies learn the rules of the house by following the older dogs. But in reality, I was learning every puberty lesson the hard way. Repeatedly. Often humiliatingly. Some simple, factual information would have gone a long way. I vowed that someday my own daughter would have every scrap of knowledge I could give her.
Imagine my surprise to find, 30 years, a daughter, and an entire internet information age later, that today’s girls are even less educated than I had been. Things like pandemics, standardized testing, and politics relegate puberty and sex education to the list of important-but-extra subjects our schools don’t have the capacity to cover. And while it’s most definitely a parent’s job to teach their kids about their bodies, the ones that actually do tend to pass on only what they know themselves.
When our kids lack basic factual information, they can choose to turn to trusted adults, their friends, or the internet for answers. And when the questions are intensely personal, don’t we all go to Google first? Let’s just think about the potential of those search results for a moment: It conjures a mental picture of me leaping in front of my daughter’s laptop, yelling “nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo” in slow motion. This is the source that suggests we cook our chicken in Nyquil and eat Tide Pods! We can’t just sit back and hope they land on a reputable and helpful site. Not only are they dealing with a lack of information, but all sorts of misinformation to parse through. That’s a lot to ask of a little hormone-flooded brain.
So in the process of doing better by my own daughter, I’ve realized this mission has to be bigger. An entire generation of American girls is fending for themselves, and we owe it to them to help them become MORE educated, not less. It has nothing to do with politics. It has nothing to do with religion. This is on us. Let us now be the trusted adults willing to speak the truth that we needed when we were younger.
Incredible 