Sort of, but no one’s really panicked with a family history of late menarche. The rule of thumb is that if you don’t have a period within three years of getting breast buds, then you should get it checked out. If you haven’t gotten a period by the age of 16, you should get it checked out. But if you didn’t get breasts until 14, no one’s freaking out if you haven’t gotten your period at 16.
Very low body fat can cause your periods to stop, but it’s more likely just a slow running internal timer that’s passed on through genetics, given the family history.
Apparently, having older brothersis enough to delay menarche. Weird, huh?
I can’t imagine either of my parents giving me “the talk.” We just didn’t communicate on that level.
We had Sex Ed in, I think, 6th grade. A special teacher came in and explained all about puberty and the egg and the sperm, and how everything worked. I was the kid who raised my hand and asked how does the sperm get from the man’s penis to the woman’s vagina. I don’t remember whether the question was adequately answered.
Beyond that, I read a whole lot of library books, especially about homosexuality. They gave me a great deal of very bad information (this was back in the late 50s). Since there was no such thing as being “out” at that time, and no way to find other gay people, I had to invent my own fantasies. I had a very active imagination.
I remember a talk about periods (and a book about my changing body) when I was maybe 11, but I don’t think it extended to sex. If it did, I blocked/dismissed it because I was so horrified and disgusted about bleeding for the rest of my life. I somehow believed a single period lasted from its onset until menopause with no breaks.
I grew up in a pretty religious Mormon household, and I’d been told about how “the dad puts a seed in the mom that fertilizes an egg that grows into a baby” when I was really young, but I was in second grade when I finally realized I had no idea HOW the dad put the seed in the mom, so my mom was on the phone with one of her friends and I came up and said “Mommy?” and she said “Yes?” and I said “How does the dad get the seed INTO the mom?” and she paused and told her friend “Uh, I have to go,” and she explained the technical details to me, albeit as generally as possible (“The dad puts his penis in the mom’s vagina…”). I was quite shocked to find out the truth, since it had always been emphasized to me that those were PRIVATE parts that nobody but you should see or touch. The idea that you were supposed to link them up was unthinkable! Fortunately, it only took a few hours for me to come to terms with the whole thing and start wondering what it would be like to actually try it.
And I still had a lot of misconceptions about how things actually worked. Like, I pictured a vagina as a firm hollow cylindrical tube running up into the uterus, just like the “cow’s head” diagram you see in books. I didn’t realize it wasn’t a big hollow space until the advent of Internet porn when I was like 16.
ETA: My wife and I have followed the WhyNot plan, it sounds like – we never treated sex as a Big Mystery to our kids, but made sure they knew age-appropriate information about the subject from very early ages. And even though they’re only 12 and 14, it seems to be working well so far. They’re definitely much better informed than me or my siblings were, and they have no problem talking to us (or at least my wife!) about anything.
Yes, multiple times. It was a veritable cornucopia of sexual knowledge from Where Did I Come From (the MOVIE!), to multiple puberty books, to actually showing our pre-teen selves what a condom looked like and how it’s applied (demonstration on fingers). When we brought up the subject she was always sure to correct any inaccuracies.
I do think I put my mom back on her heels a bit when I asked her how gay men have sex though.
Just an addendum to my prev post – I grew up in the 80s in the height of the AIDS epidemic, in New York City, so although I was perfectly well informed, there was definitely an edge of Sex is Something That Will Almost Definitely Kill You + You Can Never Trust A Sexual Partner Without Lab Tests in Their Hand.
By high school I personally knew people who had died of AIDS. Not female heterosexual virgins, mind you, but still. It was kind of a buzzkill.
I never had a formal ‘talk’. We probably talked casually about the subject 500 times though. My parents answered any questions honestly and openly (perhaps with TMI according to some) when I was 4 or 5. I can’t really remember not knowing most of the details of male and female anatomy, periods, pregnancy, sex, love, relationships.
I had pretty good sex ed class at my middle and high school, but I already knew everything so it was boring.
I don’t know about my father, but the only sex ed my mother had in school was when all the girls got a lecture from the school nurse on menstration and a saleswoman who handed out samples of female hygenic products. Nobody gave her a formal sex talk per se until she was 16 and the rabbit died. Obviously that was a bit late.
