When I was in kindergarten, my mother became pregnant with
my brother. Curious as all get out how that baby got in there, and how that
baby would get out, I turned to my parents; and my parents answered me. They
didn't get into the nitty gritty details of romance and passion, but they also
didn't blush. They explained the biology of how a baby is conceived and how a
baby is born. My father, a pediatrician, and my mother, a librarian, shared
age-appropriate books with me and used real words for real body parts. They gave
me the gift of scientific information. Not quite 6, I understood my own potential
to one day become a mother. By the spring of my kindergarten year, I was more
informed about reproductive health and female anatomy than Missouri Senator
hopeful, Todd Akin.
Take a second and read this, if you haven't already: Todd Akin: One More Male Politician Clueless About Female Biology by Lisa Belkin (one of my favorite writers on all
things parenthood).
As a mother of sons, I take this article to heart. If grown
men - men who've gone to Ivy League schools and married women who presumably
find them bright and attractive, men who've won the votes of female voters who
care enough to find time in their very busy days to make their way to the
voting booths, men who get nominated by pools of other elected officials to
serve on committees devoted to science - if those men, don't know the basics
about how a woman's body works, then I have my work cut out for me.
It is my job as a mommy, to make sure my boys know that the
female body doesn't have "a way of shutting" anything down. They need
to know that the word vagina, while a
little weird since it doesn't really rhyme with anything and perhaps too close
for comfort to the name Regina, is not a
swear word as Representative Mike Callton might have them believe. When my sons are older, I will tell them what
rape is. I will explain that rape doesn't require an adjective.
The luxury of knowledge is something I have taken for
granted. But seeing the grotesque display of ignorance amongst some of our
nation's politicians, I now realize - and not a moment too late - that
knowledge is a gift. My responsibility to my children, and I believe now to my
country, is to raise boys into men who value facts.
As of today, my younger son wants to be a farmer and my
older son wants to be a paleontologist. Perhaps they'll go on to see their
boyhood predictions to truth, or perhaps something else will strike their fancy
(say, maybe before dinner). However, whatever they decide to "be"
when they grow up, if I've done my part, they will "be" men who know
that women's bodies belong to women.
I am in the business of raising men. That's a task I don't
take lightly. My wish for my children as they mature, is that their knowledge
gives them both the confidence to speak out and the wisdom to stay quiet.
As for me, I wish I could have a word with Todd Akin's mama.
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