Okay, I made the absolute mistake of first, watching Good Morning Britain and second, Victoria Derbyshire. GMB is just Daily Mail sensationalism on TV. No wonder Piers Morgan is on there. Derbyshire is much more balanced, but only if they have intelligent people on.
So, a fertility doctor (Geeta Nargund) was discussing fertility education in schools, which she has been campaigning for. This I presume is in response to the increasing age at which people have children and thus the higher risk for fertility issues. This is something I get quite passionate about, as I did my Bachelors Dissertation on similar and I’m constantly being told I’m “young and healthy” so my fertility won’t be an issue. Four years later, five cycles, one pregnancy, no living child. I appreciate, being same-sex, many may think fertility doesn’t affect be… But, I still do the treatment. And I pay for it.
I don’t see anything wrong with teaching children about fertility. Teaching children about fertility is not telling them to go have wild, filthy sex in the PE changing rooms and make lots of babies then and there. Why on earth do people think this? Sex education has been debated constantly about the ethics and morals. Education is not encouragement. Surely the USA reduction in teenage pregnancies that has been attributed to the likes of MTVs 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom shows the education can have positive consequences. No doubt the debates over the moral justification of those shows “glamourising” teen pregnancies were everywhere six years ago.
Fertility is a perfectly acceptable and normal aspect of biology. To skirt around such an important subject is doing children’s education an injustice. We teach reproduction at schools, what’s the harm of teaching the life cycle in its complete form. Puberty, fertility, pregnancy, menopause.
Teaching children the impact of various lifestyle choices in a factual and informative way enables them to have information available to them at the point that they need it. Teaching them at a young age, the various repercussions of smoking, obesity and alcohol for example may enable some children to make slightly different choices. And if it doesn’t right now, it might in the future. Accessing health information in the form of preventive education is the route all health services should be going down.
Do you teach healthy eating once you people get morbidily obese?
Do you wait until a lung cancer diagnosis to educate on the effects of smoking?
There is a huge difference between educating someone on fertility and causing teenagers to go out and get pregnant.
Have an open mind people. Speak about normal life. At any age. That is how you combat taboo subjects. Normalise them.
Maybe we should put stillbirth and miscarriage on the agenda for schools? Woah, sorry! Did I go way too far then? Surely the Daily Mail fanatics will be after me!
Ahh, feel better now. Never watching trash TV again. Until new Teen Mom comes back anyway…
The Legacy of Leo 