Anti-Baby Brainwashing

Squirming my way through the Sex Ed part of the curriculum during our Biology lessons as a young teen was always uncomfortable; formal black-and-white diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems loomed large on the overhead projector, whilst Mr Lewis rattled off the unlikely-sounding names for the various organs and functions as matter-of-factly as possible with thirty pubescent pupils tittering loudly and smirking behind their hands.

Even at a respectable grammar school, the classroom often descended into childish jokes and unruly behaviour, but the overriding message was broadcast and received loud and clear: whatever you do, do NOT get pregnant. This directive was quickly backed up with a suitably bloody video of childbirth, our faces contorting as the screen depicted a brutal scene more gruesome than any horror film even the most rebellious amongst us had ever snuck a glimpse of. At least a slasher movie would have come with an 18 rating, warning us of the level of gore to follow. It was horrific, and further reinforced the message: parenthood equals pain. 

 It was drilled far down into the depths of our impressionable subconscious minds that to become impregnated with a child would be the death knell for our promising futures, a fate reserved for the uneducated riff-raff from the all-girls comp down the road. Such was our abject terror of this unfortunate destiny that we grew up to view motherhood as some kind of terrible occupation reserved for those with no ambition or hopes for the future, a lifelong penance for not paying attention in class. To be a young mother was the height of shame and failure. 

I'm certain that this anti-baby brainwashing in the late Eighties is partly responsible for the general late blossoming of Generation X - an entire societal segment whose brains absorbed those toe-curlingly cringeworthy Sex Ed lessons like a sponge and drew the same conclusion : I must not get pregnant. 

Of course, when Mr Lewis delivered those dire anti-pregnancy preachings, he didn't mean "don't get pregnant EVER," but it's like being a hypnotist and putting everyone in the room in a trance, then packing up your show for the night and driving off into the sunset, forgetting to break the spell and unhypnotise them again. The idea stuck. Not only did we not get pregnant during our schooldays, we didn't get pregnant in our twenties either. It was only when the clock struck midnight on the eve of our thirtieth birthdays that the spell was suddenly broken and we all woke up, disorientated and rubbing our eyes, wondering when we were supposed to tick "have a baby" off the to-do lists of our lives. 

I'm sure part of the lecture was about avoiding STIs too (or STDs as they were called in those days, the "disease" part now having been swopped for the more innocuous-sounding "infection"), but that part was largely dismissed by us healthy youngsters. AIDS may have been briefly mentioned in hushed tones, but to us that was an exotic disease that happened far, far away, in Africa....or Hampstead Heath, amongst promiscuous gay men. No, we had little fear of sexually-transmitted diseases, the only immediately pressing issue for us was to remain baby-free. 

That's not to say that we all lived a chaste existence, far from it. We were highly-charged hormonal teens after all, the oestrogen coursing through our veins causing my friends and I to partake in all manner of ill-advised activities in the hope of hooking up with the hottest lads in the year. I clearly remember the hours spent in front of the mirror primping and preening prior to the local under-18s disco, plucking my poor eyebrows into submission and shaving my legs until I developed a rash. 

For weeks beforehand we'd plan our outfits, hair, make-up, as well as the less-legit details such as who would be responsible for procuring the alcohol from their parents' drinks cabinet, siphoning off a finger of vodka here or a generous glug of gin there, topping up the part-empty bottle with water and slipping it back undetected. After a few of these parties, the bottles in the cabinet would be filled with about 60% water. Our parents would be in for a disappointment when they next reached for a stiff drink after a hard day at the office. 

Feeling self-conscious and self-critical are typical teen traits, ones that we attempted to mask with self-medication: be it alcohol, cigarettes or a badly-rolled spliff that resembled a rogue Tampax that'd escaped from it's wrapping and had been knocking about in the bottom of our schoolbags for a few weeks. 

The perceived benefits of these unhealthy habits were two-fold; loosening us up (in more ways than one, unfortunately) and also making us look "cool". Or so we thought at the time. I'd love to shake my self-doubting sixteen-year-old self and say "you ARE good enough. You don't need to do this." 

As cannabis often leads on to the hard stuff, snogging boys at the school disco was the gateway drug to sex. Gradually, throughout our adolescence, we increased in confidence and experience until sex became inevitable. We shared stories within our tight social circle, comparing notes, scribbling in code in our diaries about our personal lives, tightly encrypted of course, lest it fall into the wrong hands - a nosy parent or vengeful sibling. 

Of course, despite being careful on the whole, mistakes happened. I was (and still am) lucky enough to have a tight-knit group of schoolfriends who were always there with a shoulder to cry on....or provide a lift to the Family Planning Clinic, should one of us require the Morning After Pill. "Better to be safe than sorry" the matronly staff there would say, reinforcing the school's stance, and we'd agree, embarrassed yet grateful. 

One thing I'm absolutely certain we were never warned about during those school lectures, nor the GUM clinics, however, was that sex (and sexual activity in general) could cause cancer. Would it have bothered us? I'm not sure. Would we have straightened up in our childish wooden seats and paid attention? Perhaps not, we weren't too concerned about the common four-letter swear word of the time that was AIDS, were we?

At that age, when everything's fine under the bonnet, the engine of your body humming like a prized Lamborghini, future lifestyle-related illnesses seem way off, impossible to comprehend. Although it would have been nice to have been informed. It was only around a decade later, aged 25, whilst undergoing surgery to remove part of my pre-cancerous cervix, that I found out that unprotected sex can indeed cause cancer. And a whole host of other issues as a result of the infection or subsequent surgery, including infertility. We were definitely not told any of that at school.