PERSONAL COLUMN
The 'twenties way of growing up
YVONNE BROCK
In my experience most discussions on sex education tend to be unsatisfactory. It is like trying to discuss, say, apartheid, trade unions or selection in education with Conservatives. All these subjects carry a strong emotional charge, and the opinions which people hold about them are therefore not wholly rational. The current rumpus about Dr Martin Cole's film Growing Up is a case in point. Is it possible to cool it a little, to suggest that appropriate knowledge in sexual as in other matters may well be better than ignorance? What seems to me certain beyond all argument is that the success or failure of any system of sex education will depend very largely upon the attitudes of the parents concerned.
Some years ago the middle class attitude to sex was summarised, perhaps unkindly but with some truth, by the late Dorothy Sayers. Sex, she wrote, was considered by most people to be quite disgusting unless the partners (a) were married and (b) derived no pleasure from it, whereupon it became too sacred for discussion. Fortunately there are signs that attitudes are changing. An elegant grandmother of my acquaintance recently recounted with considerable amusement her experience in a restaurant when she had expressed fears of putting on weight after an excellent lunch. "Never mind, Grandma," said her small grandson consolingly, "If you've got a fat tummy it means that there's a baby in it. You'll like that, won't you?"
Such a remark in my childhood would have horrified my elders beyond words and reinforced their conviction that the less children know of "the facts of life" the better. I was a middle class child of the 'twenties and received no sex education whatsoever. In fact, looking back now on what might be called my pre-sex life my ignorance at various stages seems staggering, but may alas have been not untypical.
My household was a large one and included a number of animals of considerable fecundity — particularly cats. I remember as a small child my grandmother pointing out to me the movement of kittens in the swollen belly of a very pregnant cat, and my amazement that kittens could be alive before they were born. Discussion of such matters however was discouraged by most of the adults. I can't quite remember how, but there was a distinct atmosphere of "things best not talked about." It seems barely credible that, aged about six or seven, I could accept the kittens inside the cat (though not apparently wonder how they got in or out) and yet not dispute the story told me by a domestic servant that one of my pet rabbits had acquired her young by leaving her hutch, going down to the bottom of the orchard and collecting them from the stinging nettles. I remember here receiving crude enlightenment from a small boy friend. "When did she lay these?" he asked, looking at the baby rabbits, and jeered at my story of stinging nettles. I hurried to get confirmation or denial from my mother, interrupting her bridge party with the urgent query — " Mummie, Henry says Cottontail laid her babies. Is it true ?" The answer given me at the time was evasive. Somehow I seemed to see less of Henry after that. . . .
I had enough sense to let the subject drop for the time being, but returned to it after the birth of the next litter. " Mummie," I said one night as my mother came to say goodnight to me, " does Cottontail really get her babies from the lower orchard, because how does she get out of the hutch . . .?" With a sigh my mother sat down on the end of my bed and said that no, baby rabbits like kittens grew inside the mother. So, she added after a pause, did human babies. I cannot remember asking any questions, though the information must have seemed surprising. I was six when my youngest sister was born, had noticed no change in my mother's appearance, and had accepted without question that the doctor had brought her in his little black bag. I think that it is a fallacy that small children can learn about sex from animals. For a start there is this extraordinary failure to connect (as exemplified by the kitten/ rabbit situation) and, perhaps more important, an instinctive reluctance to relate human to animal behaviour, particularly in the context of the family.
I can remember two incidents of sexual unpleasantness before I reached puberty. The first, I suspect, left a trauma because even now I can see the scene quite clearly; an open air swimming pool where my family and I and some cousins were bathing and picnicking one fine summer's day. I had left the others by their picnic and was walking round the pool deep in thought, probably ' being' some character in fiction, for such were my early games. A bald-headed man sitting by the side of the pool was watching me, and as I approached a second time he said something which made me look at him — and then I saw what he held in his hand. It is difficult to date this experience, but I think I was probably between eight and ten years old. I told no one; I returned to the family group and stayed close to them for the rest of the day, trying to banish the incident from my mind. I had no doubt that it was unpleasant and I felt vaguely menaced, but the trouble was that I simply did not know how to think about it.
The other incident, of a somewhat lighter nature, occurred when I was about twelve, shortly before I went away to school. An annual delight was the local Fair; not the side shows but the roundabouts, particularly the splendid 'big horses.' A shared horse, in the arithmetic of those days, seemed only half a ride, so my friend and I rode at a little distance from each other. A shabby middle-aged man moved from his mount and got up behind me and, as he asked me whether I would like another ride, his hands were feeling my practically nonexistent bosom. I hastily declined, said my mother wanted me and sought my friend who, it then appeared, had been similarly molested. We said nothing to our parents (who, needless to say, were not far off) but after that we rode together.
I started boarding school life at the age of twelve, and there sex was the prevailing topic — in fact, apart from attempts to one-up each other in such matters as opulence of family car and extravagance of holiday activities, I can't remember that we talked about much else! Before I left home my mother had told me about menstruation, stressing the ' curse ' aspect rather than relating it to reproduction, and I also knew that babies grew inside their mothers' bodies. From garbled playground revelations I had too some idea of how they got in — though how they got out was a complete mystery to me.
At school my contemporaries assured me that the pregnant woman's tummy split open from the navel downwards and the baby burst out. I fancy this belief is (or was) quite common in children, but I found it far from reassuring. We also believed, up to the age of about fifteen, that the inevitable result of every act of sexual intercourse was a baby. Parents of only children, it therefore seemed to us, had led sadly impoverished lives. The small amount of romantic fiction in the school library was of little help to us in our researches, though we were puzzled by coy revelations of the "Soon there will be three of us" variety, made by young wives to their husbands—". . . but if they'd done that he'd have known. . . ."
The nearest we got to sex in the classroom was biology. Here we asked searching questions about the reproduction of the rabbit, but more with the object of embarrassing the science mistress — who blushed spectacularly — than in the hope of gaining any useful information.
My total impression of these boarding school years is one of innocence. Certainly we had romantic attachments, but these 'crushes' remained, as far as I know, innocent and non-physical. I certainly did not know what lesbianism was during my schooldays; I doubt that I had even encountered the word. Innocent we undeniably were, but ignorant too, and some factual instruction at an earlier stage might well have saved some of the time and energy spent in frenzied sexual speculation. When I left school the saying "sweet seventeen and never been kissed" was hateful to me because it was true in my case. I had lied about this at school in boastful competition with other girls, but I felt dull and plain and woefully young-looking. I was nearly nineteen before I made it any way that counted.
I would not now claim that my adult life has been blighted in any way by the semicomic muddle which I have charted — though it may have been; who knows? I would certainly think that children today, freed from the disgusting/sacred or ' rude ' concepts of sex, stand a better chance of achieving maturity without tears.
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