Happy International Women’s Day 2023! For the first time, BOMA-TT held ‘The Mother & Daughter Seminar’ on Thursday, March 2 and Saturday 4. This seminar was created to launch the conversations that mothers and daughters ought to have when it comes to girls becoming women.
The mothers in attendance were generally pleased with the seminar, however one daughter revealed that she had heard most of the content before. This revelation shocked her mother.
Our young people are being educated about sexuality whether we like it or not through classmates, social media, movies, television shows, internet searches and others. To gain her confidence, it was advised at the seminar not to wait until she started her menstrual cycles to start talking about what to expect physically in the future.
Why? Because she needs to know that puberty is an amazing rite of passage for her. A new life can begin inside of her body! What an awesome feature of being a human. This is love beyond measure.
In the Theology of the Body, we understand that ‘love’ is all about wanting what is best for one’s beloved. Love can lead to intimacy with one person and in marriage, where sex really belongs, can lead to the growth of the love between a man and a woman. Specifically, the growth of their child or children after the marital act! The fruit of their love.
We also learn from the Theology of the Body that love, to be called ‘love’, must include sacrifice. The menstrual cycle can thus be viewed as a preparation for the sacrificial love it entails in becoming a loving mother.
There is however an unfortunate outlook on the development of the reproductive system as a time of dismay because it involves bleeding and pain. Everything else in puberty seems tolerable – wearing deodorant, putting on brassieres and becoming shapelier. But when it comes to checking for bleeding and feeling pains in the lower abdomen, young women can conclude that to be a woman is a miserable thing!
A woman has more responsibility for her reproductive system and fertility since she bears a greater burden than a man who can walk away from the conjugal act with little bodily-impactful consequence, other than pleasure.
This is true particularly for seemingly reprehensible men who view the female body as just a tool for man’s pleasure and not to be revered since new human life comes from a woman’s body.
The level of devastation that a woman can feel after giving herself to a man and realising that the father of their child has left her alone in carrying a pregnancy is immeasurable. Not to say that some women do not feel this devastation as strongly as others do. However, generally, there is brokenness in this scenario.
Both young men and women need to be educated about their developing bodies and what it means to be a human. Discussing the menstrual cycle is important in preparing our girls for life as a woman, and with boys in respecting the bodies of girls.
In a recent podcast interview Dr Sarah Denny, Professor of Ethics at Loyola University, New Orleans, spoke about empowering young women about their bodies and educating young men about the dignity of the female body.
She also spoke about the bitterness that remains with women and spreads to other women in schools etc when there is no healing from the hurt that some men have caused by not knowing/caring about the value of women. Relationships, honesty, and love should be priority in educating children about sex. How powerful are the choices we make about what we do with our bodies.
She paraphrased Pope St John Paul II in stating that what determines manhood is to think about the objectively loving thing to do with a woman and not to dominate her but respect her and love her.
Young, single Catholics should be educated in Natural Fertility Awareness. “It is Chastity education that is not afraid of science.” It assists in vocation preparation. It is time to give young people the truth about their bodies.
View what Dr Denny had to say on YouTube: Search for ‘Margaret Sanger meets John Paul II’.
BOMA-TT Tel: 384-1659
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Photo by Kristina Paukshtite