When my son was a toddler I discovered an essential parenting hack: an inexpensive toy that reliably ate up 15 minutes of our endless days. It was light and portable, easy to stash in a pocket. Plus, I almost always had one on me, or a friend could rustle one up in fair enough condition from the bottom of her purse. Or if I had a quarter or was in a particularly thoughtful bathroom, a fresh one was at my fingertips.
I am talking, of course, about tampons. Or as my young son called them, “rockets.” He delighted in them, would beg for them. I often came upon him creating an elaborate storyline, intelligible only to himself, with a tampon he’d found in a coat pocket or drawer or, let’s be honest, one of the many piles of crap that dotted our apartment. Sometimes he found a whole box — jackpot! Those instances, in all fairness, could get pretty expensive.
Tampons are everywhere, because periods are everywhere. But they are also, for many people, completely invisible. They are part of a secret language one half of the population is fluent in and the other complains about or politely ignores. Though there is of course a wide range most people with uteruses have their period 10 times more frequently than they go to the movies. In her book Period: The Real Story of Menstruation, biological anthropologist Kate Clancy shares research that indicates that the average menstruating person has 451 cycles in their lifetime. And yet, Clancy explains, due to a misogynistic culture that views women’s bodies as broken and suspect and scientific research that has often followed suit, discussing your period, not to mention showing evidence of it (how many shirts have I tied around my waist in horror over the years?) can feel like admitting to some private shame.
Who wants to live like that? Who wants to parent like that?
I didn’t hide the tampons from my son, and in a strange way, his interest in them made me even braver about not hiding them from the world. He played with them in coffee shops and on public transportation, sometimes sucking on the cotton, letting the string dangle from his grinning face. Anytime someone I clocked as a man glanced our way, I smiled smugly. I wanted the other half of the world to stop ignoring periods, one unwrapped menstrual product at a time, like a kind of societal exposure therapy.
My son will be an adult some day, and I want him to not only love his body, but loves the bodies of others. I want him to care for his friends with uteruses as well as those without.
When my son ran into our bathroom one morning and saw me shoving a rocket up my vagina, I decided to explain. I told him how the blood, which was not just blood, lined the walls of his home when he lived in my body for almost a year. It kept him warm. He was interested in all the babies this meant I wasn’t hosting, the fact that he had been an egg like them, that he’d been inside of me from the time I grew inside my own mom. That, though we have been told the egg is passive, “waiting for her prince,” as Clancy puts it, the uterus and everything inside it work wisely and diligently, better than the most elaborate construction site.
After that, I practiced saying, “I have my period,” without shame or covering it up with humor. “I can’t walk you to school today, I have my period.” “Want to snuggle and watch digger videos? I have my period.” It can feel creepy, or even wrong, to think about our children’s reproductive systems, but my son will be an adult some day, and I want him to not only love his body, but loves the bodies of others. I want him to care for his friends with uteruses as well as those without.
I’m not the only one. Many of my female friends with sons talk to them about periods. One made her middle school son carry pads and tampons in his backpack for friends who needed them, just like I’ve done, subconsciously, for 30 years. One, with a now-15-year old, pointed out that his learning about his mother’s menstruation set the stage for his later understanding of his own hormonal changes. Boys have hormones, too, it would seem. Like the patriarchy, private shame hurts men as well.
Like many people, I first learned to shove a “rocket” up my cooch from my older sister. I have a memory of her standing on the other side of the bathroom door — she must have been 14 and I was 12 — trying to coach me while I scrunched up my face in discomfort and puzzled at the horrifying visual instructions from the box. It was like trying to tell someone else’s hands how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I have a daughter now, too, and she won’t have a sister, something I think about with pain all the time. But maybe, just maybe, her brother carry an extra pad in his pocket, or bring her tea during the many days each month she will wish she could just lie in bed.
I think about the millions of instances of care I’ve shared with my sisters, with friends, with complete strangers. Cradling my grandmother’s fingers as I painstakingly paint her fingernails, receiving my babies from that same sister’s outstretched hands (don’t worry, she’s certified!), helping someone I just met wash the blood off their skirt in a public restroom. I want to make women’s bodies less taboo, yes, but I also do this teaching selfishly. I don’t want my son, born looking and feeling like a man in this society, to miss out on these moments. Parenting is as much about carrying on your lineage as it is about envisioning something new and better. I’m working on it, one month at a time.
