If you had a book on human anatomy, would you leave it lying around when your kids started going through puberty, or would you hide it?

No, I think it would be a good idea for kids to have access to a book that showed realistic pictures of the human body and all its parts. They will have plenty of other opportunities to get misinformation from friends and unrealistic images of the body from the media (including porn).

I’d leave it out, of course. Kids should know what’s going on with their bodies, and it’s up to the parents to make sure they know.

All of my books are available to be read at any time, regardless of content.

@answerjill What? That’s what a book on human anatomy is…it shows realistic pictures of the human body and all its parts.

@Dutchess_III I think you misread @answerjill ‘s comment. She was agreeing that it would be positive to have an anatomy book available to be read. (Correct me if I’m wrong)

Whne my son hit puberty, I left Love and Sex in Plain Language,,
(written by a gentle Quaker friend) lying around the kitchen as part of the available reading material. At some point it disappeared, into my son’s room, I am sure

The author taught the eighth grade sex education unit at our school so it was all good.

I say leave it around.

@Seek_Kolinahr… She said, “No…They will have plenty of other opportunity’s to get misinformation…” But, perhaps I really am misunderstanding her.

“No” was in answer to “would you hide it”.

An accurate anatomy book I would never hide from my children. It would be on a shelf for them to take whenever they were curious. I would probably give it to them if they were becoming curious or I could tell they were starting puberty. I would hope they had learned about some basic anatomy and what to expect during puberty before puberty hits. I had a class in school in 5th grade teaching us some of that stuff. Plus, the women in my family were not modest so I saw grown-up women’s bodies from, well, always.

@answerjill‘s answer was confusing because the main question was not a yes or no question.

I bought my daughter a book called What’s Happening toMy Body?
She wore that thing out!!
I’m sure that I have the only kid who corrected the teacher during Sex Ed class.

LOL!! What did the teacher say that was wrong? I’m curious @Judi!

You know, when I was growing up, in the 60’s, we had a set of encyclopedias that had those cool, clear plastic sheets that you layered over a basic drawing. One sheet showed the bones, another the circulatory system, etc. Well, one day, when I was about 13, a friend of mine told me about the clitoris, and what it does. I went searching through the encyclopedia. Guess what….no clitoris was shown. I’m guessing they were printed in the late 50’s.

Dutchess_III I have one of those in my house – a newer edition, mind you.

@Judi My 5th grade teacher answered a student’s question incorrectly about birth control pills. She was not the sex ed teacher, but the student asked her, probably because she felt more comfortable with her. I happen to be there when she asked. Her answer stuck with me, and then a few years later I learned she didn’t understand how the pill works.

I wouldn’t leave it lying around, I’d probably give it to them.

I so badly wanted to get a set of GOOD encyclopedias for my kids, but never could afford it. Then the internet came out. I still want a set, though, because they’re so nice.

I remember learning sex ed in Biology. I was not afraid to ask questions. I asked a question (don’t remember what it was,) the teacher turned all red and started stammering, never answered, and that was the end of my sex education. I figured it all out eventually! Never fell for any of the stupid shit, like, getting preggers from a toilet seat.

I would leave the book around, starting long before my kids hit puberty. Children become very curious at young ages. It’s better if they can find answers on their own terms, quietly and without embarrassment, and avoid getting wrong information from their friends.

Both my kids brought home such a book from school as part of their biology coursework, they were cool as chips about the whole thing, it was me who was the giggling neanderthal…no change there then :-)

I would leave it out in the open and actively encourage them to read it.

@Dutchess_III I actually don’t remember hearing much really stupid shit. The only thing I remember is being very little and a friend of mine saying you have to be married to have a baby, and I said that wasn’t true. My parents always answered my questions about sex, plus we had sex ed in school, plus I never had any boy incidents very very young. Some kids have boyfriends or girlfriends in 3rd grade and where I grew up when I was very little there was nothing of the sort. Sex and making babies was for older people, so the topic never really came up where misinformation would be spread. Plus, where I lived we had a reasonable amount of liberal people who would not be uptight about sex or think trying to hide knowledge about sex would be beneficial to their children.

Like @Seek_Kolinahr I have books of all kinds. I pick up a new books all the time. I read them, always with an eye toward one of my kids reading it. A few times I’ve thrown the book away after I read it for that reason. I can’t remember any of them specifically though. But I have books, books, books everywhere.

One time my father’s wife, who has never had kids, sent my daughter a book for her 13th birthday. Of course I previewed it….and I was SO PISSED. It was about a girl who had a crush on some teacher, and it described, in detail her sexual fantasies about this teacher. The F bomb was all through the book in a sexual manner.
I was really angry. Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but I called my dad’s wife on it. She said something stupid like, “But that’s real life for a child that age!”
I said, “What makes you think that? I never had any grossly sexual fantasies about any of the boys I liked, much less a teacher when I was 13! I was into romance!” Made me wonder if she’d F’d any of her teachers in Middle School.

@ragingloli Believe me…you don’t have to encourage them. That would probably serve to embarrass them, more than anything, and make them less likely to read it. As I said, I could tell by the way the book was worn that they were reading it, but they never left it out—probably because it would embarrass them to know the I knew they were looking at it.

@JLeslie I heard a lot of crap in the locker room in PE. I had a “boyfriend” in 3rd grade, but he was actually just my best friend. He kissed me once, under a table in the bathroom, probably because it was “expected,” but that’s the only thing we ever experimented with.

@Dutchess_III I was a perverted little kid, so I probably was having grossly sexual fantasies at 13. My husband lost his virginity at 14, so I know for a fact he had dirty little thoughts way before then. I didn’t give a hoot about romance as a kid, and I still don’t. I always found romance novels embarrassingly cheesy. I do know that my barbies did very naughty things to each other – Barbie and Ken, Ken and Ken, and maybe even a little Barbie and Barbie.

I’m not saying the book was appropriate, of course. I’m just saying…I don’t think of 13-year-olds as all that young and innocent. They might be able to teach us a few things.

@Dutchess_III Sex talk when I was a teen was just who was doing it, first base all the way type conversation. No one was really discussing how you get pregnant, I think we knew.

I just texted my daughter. She says she remembers doing it but she doesn’t remember what it was.
She had that book memorized and knew more than I did.

How would an anatomy book be considered sinful?!

We have anatomy books and have owned them for years. We also have how babies are made type of books.

When my son is interested in how something works, he asks. I answer or send him to the appropriate book or website to better satisfy his curiosity and quest for knowledge.

@JLeslie We knew how you got pregnant too, but then there were embellishments floating around like, “You can’t get pregnant the first time, or you can’t get pregnant if you ‘do it’ standing up…” silly stuff like that.

@SpatzieLover There are people out there who would consider naked pictures of any kind “sinful,” I’m sure. Maybe not so much today tho.

@Dutchess_III Got it. I think the only thing I heard was some kids talked about using the withdrawal method to not get pregnant (which actually is technically pretty effective, but you can’t trust a teenage boy to pull out) but it had been drilled into us you can get pregnant any day and to always use protection. The thing that was a little different was catching a disease was presented in sex ed, but I don’t think we worried about it at all at first, we only focused on pregnancy. I assume that is different now. I knew plenty of girls that got STD’s, but, it kind of was brushed over and no one talked about it or worried about until I was in college.

Pretty much the same stuff here, @JLeslie. One neat thing about my Mom was that I could ask her anything, and she wasn’t embarrassed to answer me. I once asked if you could get pregnant if you had sex during your period. She said, emphatically “YES. You can get pregnant at any time during your cycle.”
Ya. Unless you WANT to get pregnant, like after I got married. Then it took me three freaking years! But practice makes perfect. We thought we’d get started early with the second one. That time it took three freaking seconds. They are almost exactly 2 years apart.

@Dutchess_III Yeah, but the answer really is no not yes. That’s one problem with teaching you can get pregnant any day, it doesn’t emphasize when you can really get pregnant. It helps to know whether you are trying to get pregnant or trying to avoid it.

From everything I’ve read and heard, it’s highly unlikely, but not impossible. Just one link of a bunch that support that.

When I asked my Mom that question I already understood the normal ovulation cycle.

I mean, it’s not like they have girls lay, legs akimbo with their pussies winking at the reader…hey, that’s a great idea for a pop-up book :-)

They should, @ucme.

@Dutchess_III Oh, for sure if someone has a short cycle it is possible, I was talking regular cycle. Still, highly unlikely. I would always tell people to assume they can get pregnant every day if they don’t want to get pregnant. I just avoided sex a couple days before during and after ovulation for almost two years and never got pregnant. Then got pregnant the first month I tried. But, I was very in tune with my cycle. And, it was ok if an accident happened.

I had a near perfect cycle too. Turns out my husband had a very low sperm count.

@ucme Pop Up Book of Sex (NSFW)

Sure – all our books lie around waiting to be read.

It is hard enough to talk to your kids about sex so I would rather they learned like I did; Playboy and my friends on the street. Fortunately, my kids were girls and my wife is a maternity nurse so I was exempt and the kids got their information from a reliable source without prejudice.

@SpatzieLover That first dude looked like Jesus, religion & sex…who knew?

@Dutchess_III I’ve thrown porn-y books away before, but only because they sucked. I hate poorly written porn.

“I hate poorly written porn.”
what
is there any other kind?

Uh, yeah. Awesome porn. Well-written smut with excellent character development and more than four adjectives.

not in this universe there is not

Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote erotica.

terrible schlock no doubt

I never had kids, so I don’t know how I’d handle it. But I’m sure about one thing: I wish my parents had been more open about sex when I was growing up.

Anatomy book as in like a porn magazine? Or an actual text book?

An actual text book, or medical book, or encyclopedia.

It could be a great way to have “the talk” without really ever having to talk I guess.

It would be in addition to talking.

In 1948 Alfred Kinsey published the shocking (for the times) Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

My father had a copy hidden in his sock drawer; when both my parents were out, I used to sneak in and read bits of it. I felt riddled with guilt.

Five years later “SB in the Human Female” was published. It seemed to be more readily accessible, probably because I was much older and more resourceful.

I had a girlfriend who had a medical book that was published in the 1940’s. I picked it up one day and started looking through it. I was horrified to see ridiculous stereo types about the sexual behaviors of black women….like, they were more promiscuous than white women because their clitoris’ were bigger. Utter bullshit. I asked her how she could keep that laying around the house, and wasn’t she worried about her kids reading that one day and thinking it was true?
She just looked at me blankly, had no idea why I had a problem with it. (She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, anyway.)

I have the Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler downstairs in the library, it was a first edition so kept it, but if my son ever started reading it, he would learn all about how hitlers doctor was giving him speed, up his ass. Pretty sure that’s worse than an anatomy book, lol.

When I was a little girl, I would have been greatly helped by a frank, honest book about anatomy.

My best friend told me how babies are made—the husband puts his “thing” inside where the wife urinates, and then he urinates inside of her body. You can probably imagine how horrified I was!!! And, with nothing to set me straight, I believed that for a long time.

I never understood why we don’t want people to learn about their bodies. Humans and our taboos about sex (and how damaging they can be) will never cease to “amuse” me…

@SadieMartinPaul A girl in my 6th grade class believed the same urination story to be true. My best friend and I sat her down and had a frank conversation with her. Apparently one of her older siblings told her this (sibling also thought this to be true). The girl had 9 or 10 siblings as I recall. She was relieved to find out she didn’t come about from pee.

@SadieMartinPaul Would it have made a difference if you were told he ejaculates stuff into a woman rather than he pees? I remember the first time I was told the man outs his penis inside a woman to make a baby, and I was kind of shocked. It didn’t sound good to me.

My great aunt had given my mom a box of books to go thru to find one she might want to read, my mom ended up putting in a closet and eventually I went through it to see if there was anything good I could write a book report on (I was maybe 11). One of the books was Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (Like the woody Allen movie of the same name) LMFAO, it was not a good age to learn that apparently there are men in the world who get off on sticking things in their pee hole, LOL, I tossed that book back in the closet like it was on fire and refused to open it for over a year.

@Dutchess_III – Looks like you misunderstood my answer. Thanks to those who clarified!

Assuming it’s a decent medical textbook etc. I’d leave it out for sure. Unlike what some have said, I wouldn’t give it to the kid either. It’s not very nice as a kid going through puberty to think that perhaps your parents actually know what’s going through your head. (I should know.)

Thanks @answerjill.

When my siblings were about to hit puberty my parents left the book “What’s happening to me” in their room in an obvious place it was a more accessible read for them and we listened (from next room) quietly to their giggles and chatter.

Any and all books are available in my home for the children to read anytime.