I'm most likely not the first hippy-dippy mama to wonder why it is that we teach our little girls that their private parts are called vagina. They do have them, but its not what they can see, and its certainly not where their pee comes from.
Little boys, and their parents, have it pretty straightforward; penis, balls (and bum if you wanna talk about the whole area). Doesn't take too much explanation, it all happens right there. I wonder if vagina is an effort to mirror that simplicity? Makes sense.... except no it doesn't. The words for our anatomy don't have to be straightforward. Children born female have vulvas and within that is their labia, clitoris, urethra, and the opening to the vagina. It is more to learn about, but we don't avoid teaching our children about their face, instead telling them they only have eyes. No, their face is made up of eyes, lips, nose, cheeks, chin, forehead... They learn each of their parts, and begin to assign functions to those parts, as they gain autonomy over their bodies. Likewise, teaching them about their vaginas (which they cannot see) seems akin to the stomach. We are able to explain its function and acknowledge its existence even though our children cant see that part of their bodies. Its seems really absurd to teach our daughters that their vaginas are on the outside when they are not.
From personal experience. I remember being taught about sex accurately from a pretty young age (like 4 ish) and I feel like I have always had a healthy relationship with my body and sexuality, probably in part because of this. I dont know, I feel like we should talk about sex with are children in the way we would talk about anything else; open and honestly. Although this post is not really about sex, but more specifically about girls and their body parts. I mean really most of Olive's familiarity with her vulva is that's where the pee is coming from.
These are mostly open ended thoughts, and I would appreciate anyone else's input. I teach Olive what seems the most clear to me, vulva, labia, urethra, vagina. We talk about it. I suppose we will talk about the clitoris at some point when the discussion of pleasure/sex becomes something she is aware of.
Totally, I pretty much agree. Ambrose knows the words vulva and vagina, because he watches me empty my Diva Cup ("this is the blood from my vagina, because I'm on my period!" "Ina!" "yes, dear!") and he sees me shower (he learned "vulva" because of the mysterious absence of a penis, and I felt that vulva paralleled the visible, outward "part word" he was looking for). I've used the word urethra as well, though I don't expect him to get that at all until he's at the age of looking at detailed diagrams, as I'm not eager to give him a close-up, lol!
ReplyDeleteWhen I have a daughter I definitely want to gift her with a rich, confident vocabulary!
I've been equally anatomical with Sebastian but entirely of his own accord he's renamed vagina "boo boo." So strange!
ReplyDeleteBut I do love that in our house, vagina is the point of comparison. We learn a lot about babies, the womb, the birth canal. In response, Sebi acknowledges that he and Papa "don't have booboos" whereas I think it's more common that "lack of penis" is what is noticed.
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