# What possible justification is there for suppressing/avoiding discussion of menstruation? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 9, 2025, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830 "2025-10-09T16:10:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/81 "2025-10-18T00:02:10Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Every girl I’ve ever met who went to public school had the _“talk”_ or “_class”_ on the subject. My kids had Family Life education classes in grade school. My son kinda wanted us to opt him out of it but oh hell no. One of his teachers told of a case where a girl’s mother had not only opted her out of it, but had forbidden any discussion of it. Guess which kid had her first period at school, with ZERO preparation??? The teacher called the mother and said something to the effect of GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW AND CALM HER DOWN. I went to Catholic school and we at least had one day where the girls were taken to a different room and shown a Disney video on the subject. That was in 6th grade. I already knew a fair bit of it, but it was surely an eye-opener for some of my classmates. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/82 "2025-10-18T03:54:58Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I once read the sobering statistic that in the 19th century women spent, on average, 17 years of their lives pregnant. > > No thank you. Yes. I recall reading an article interviewing some scientists who were studying the biology of menstruation, and one thing they mentioned is a theory that the reason menstruation hits women so hard is because historically, it was _rare._ Women spent so much time pregnant that they didn’t actually have the chance to menstruate much. And yes, they also made the point that pregnancy is so much harder on a women that it’s still a net gain. Especially since one of the _reasons_ women don’t spend so much time pregnant is that our stillbirth and child mortality rates are much lower than they were back then. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/83 "2025-10-18T10:05:23Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I once read the sobering statistic that in the 19th century women spent, on average, 17 years of their lives pregnant. That sounds _ **extremely** _ unlikely, and would amount to 22 complete term pregnancies. And “average” means lots of women would be far above that number. I’m not quickly finding a number for global averages, but in the UK between 1800 and 2020 the highest average for children over a lifetime was around 5.5, or around 4.25 years pregnant if they were all individual births. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/) ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/84 "2025-10-18T11:45:55Z")
How much time a women spends pregnant isn’t directly related to how many children she gave birth to - I assume those fertility rates only count live births, not stillbirths and certainly not miscarriages. But I agree 17 years pregnant sounds high - but 17 years not menstruating between pregnancy and breastfeeding doesn’t sound so unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/85 "2025-10-18T14:17:52Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I once read the sobering statistic that in the 19th century women spent, on average, 17 years of their lives pregnant. I really would like to see this cite. I do not believe this to be true. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/86 "2025-10-18T14:19:49Z")
I think it does count miscarriages and stillbirths. When I searched for the number of pregnancies that a woman could be expected to have in the nineteenth century, the number that I found was 8 to 10. In the early nineteenth century, the average American woman had 7 children. By the late nineteenth century, this had decreased to 3.5 children. The number of years a woman spent pregnant in the nineteenth century was about 7.7, not 17. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/87 "2025-10-18T14:41:37Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I think it does count miscarriages and stillbirths. Probably so. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Don’t remember where I read it. (And it could have been earlier than 19th century.) Sufficed to say, women spent a lot more time pregnant than they do now. I hated being pregnant. I know some women love it, but twice was enough for me. I lost the first one in the first trimester. Immediately after my son was born, I said, “I’m not doing this again.” ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2025, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/88 "2025-10-18T17:55:13Z")
I hated being pregnant, too. I had pms from hell for months during the second pregnancy. And no one would treat it, because “it will pass”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/89 "2025-10-20T20:21:40Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > But I agree 17 years pregnant sounds high - but 17 years not menstruating between pregnancy and breastfeeding doesn’t sound so unlikely. Yeah, if we’re looking only at the phenomenon of “not having menstrual discharge”, the combination of spontaneously aborted pregnancies, five or more full-term pregnancies with several months of post-natal lactational amenorrhea per birth, and earlier onset of menopause (along with nutritional-deficit amenorrhea in many cases) could easily mean that the average adult woman didn’t actually experience menstrual bleeding very often. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/90 "2025-10-20T20:33:39Z")
And now, thanks to continuous birth control, many of us don’t experience menstruation at all, whether we’re constantly pregnant or not. Yay feminism! > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I hated being pregnant, too. I had pms from hell for months during the second pregnancy. And no one would treat it, because “it will pass”. I hate being nauseated, and was nauseated for a solid 16 weeks (I don’t know how people endure it for longer.) I also had intense, rapidly spreading hives over my entire body that I ended up taking steroids for (I often wonder if that level of inflammation could have contributed to my son’s autism, but so little is known it’s impossible to say.) But the worst part for me was the fatigue. I could work a few hours a day and come home and that was my life. No conversations with my husband, no books, no video games, just endless exhaustion that drained my life of meaning. I don’t even want to do that _twice_ much less seven times. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830/91 "2025-10-20T23:53:02Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > And now, thanks to continuous birth control, many of us don’t experience menstruation at all, whether we’re constantly pregnant or not. > > Yay feminism! > **[Throwback Thursday: "Even the Queen" By Connie Willis (1992) -...](https://sciencefiction.com/2017/06/08/throwback-thursday-even-the-queen-by-connie-willis-1992/)** > > It’s that time of the week! It’s time for Throwback Thursday, ScienceFiction.com’s ongoing column dedicated to the great science fiction of the past. And today, I have a quirky one for you, and a 1993 Hugo Award Winner, “Even the Queen”. Good science... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-possible-justification-is-there-for-suppressing-avoiding-discussion-of-menstruation/1023830.md?page=4)