Tanith Carey (pictured) says young girls should be taught to be responsible owners of their bodies
NO
By Tanith Carey
Do you remember that first drawing of a woman’s reproductive system you tried so hard to figure out in your school biology textbook?
Well, it turns out they left one very important bit out. A hammock-shaped band of muscle that runs from back to front at the base of a woman’s pelvis and which keeps all these bits and pieces in place.
Like so many women of my age, I’d never even heard of my pelvic floor until it started to give me problems in my 40s. By then, two babies — and a lot of neglect — meant it was no longer trampoline-taut.
And as it helps with bladder control, annoyingly, I am now one of those women who has to cross my legs when I sneeze or laugh. In fact, I am so fed up with worrying where the nearest loo is when I go out, I have taken remedial action to build up my strength down there.
Every day, I do intimate push-ups with an Elvie Kegel Trainer. It is connected to an app on my phone and gives me challenges as I aim for a novel kind of personal best.
My point is that when you are the owner of organs as delicate as those in the female reproductive system, you need to know from an early age how to look after them.
Indeed, keeping our daughters in ignorance will have a high price.
Research shows that one third of adult women in the UK are affected by pelvic floor disorders which can surface as early as your 20s.
Prolapse, when one or more of the organs in the pelvis — the uterus, bowel or bladder for example — are no longer held in place, causing severe discomfort, costs the NHS an estimated £45 million a year.
Further down the line, incontinence caused by a weak pelvic floor is one of the principal reasons older women go into residential care.
Yet while girls are told in PE lessons how to keep the muscles they can see strong, they are never told how to do the same for the ones they cannot, and which are just as important.
In the final years of primary school, children are given the basics about vaginas, ovaries and fallopian tubes.
So why is adding the pelvic floor muscles to that biology textbook diagram — with a little bit of information when they start secondary school about how to keep them strong as they get older — making some people so squeamish?
After all, if we keep our daughter’s bodies a mystery to them, how can they grow up to be careful, responsible owners?
Helena Frith Powell (pictured) argues lessons about the pelvic floor would be more stress at a vulnerable time
YES
By Helena Frith Powell
Just when you thought you’d heard it all, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (rather improbably known by the acronym Nice) has decided girls as young as 12 should be taught the perils of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction (PFD).
They suggest all girls aged 12 to 17 need lessons on this muscle group and the internal exercises you can do to avoid problems brought on by pregnancy, childbirth and ageing.
This made me feel rather late to the game. I didn’t think about my own pelvic floor until I’d given birth to my third child. A French friend suggested I might be ripe for some ‘retraining’ in that department. Apparently, it’s de rigueur for French women, who are given free advice courtesy of their health service.
As soon as I was told about this possible downside to natural childbirth and ageing, I panicked. I started manically doing pelvic floor exercises whenever I could.
Dinner parties were never the same again. If I was stuck next to someone dull, I took the opportunity to give my pelvic floor a pull-up-and-release workout. It got to the stage where my husband would no longer ask me if I’d enjoyed myself at the end of an evening, but what sort of shape my pelvic floor was in. If it was good, I’d been terribly bored.
I’m pleased I did all this, but I was in my late 30s when this epiphany took place, not 12.
Can you imagine being worried about your pelvic floor at a time when pregnancy, let alone its after-effects, is such a far off prospect? Being told what can go wrong with your body when you’re only just learning how it works?
To my mind, it’s like focusing on the menopause when you’ve only just got your period. I simply don’t understand this desperation to warn children about something that may or may not happen in the dim and distant future.
Many young girls already find talking about sex and childbirth embarrassing, possibly even extremely uncomfortable. So, if we now throw an ‘oh and, by the way, you need to worry about an embarrassing dysfunction’ into the equation, what chance do they have of approaching their sexually active years with confidence and enthusiasm?
It sends the wrong message. By preparing girls this early, you risk giving the impression they need to be getting on with pelvic floor exercises. Urgently. The result? Yet another stress at a vulnerable time when they already have plenty to deal with.
Source: Daily Mail Femail
