Amended review
One quick thing I wanted to add. After I read Jenna’s comment below I wanted to say that another thing I appreciate about this book is that it doesn’t have any “unplanned pregnancy will ruin your life” in it. (There is one young woman who says she placed her baby in an open adoption and another who terminated. Are there others? Those are the only two I saw who talked about getting pregnant.)
Especially after adopting Madison, I do NOT think an unplanned pregnancy is a disaster that will ruin a young person’s life. It will, however, make her life less in her control. Whether she chooses to terminate, place or parent, it becomes part of her emotional and physical reality. I will NOT use scare tactics with either of my kids re., unplanned pregnancy. The truth is that an unplanned pregnancy — even within a “perfect” situation where mom and dad are married and stable and love each other — is damn hard. But it happens and people survive and even thrive, especially when they have access to their options and honest support as they weigh their decisions. (An important thing I will stress to Noah is that he will have very little control over the decision-making should he get someone pregnant and that he will need to consider this when he’s contemplating having sex.)
[...] Dawn at This Woman’s Work, a TCYOF fan who credits her first child’s existence to her reading of Weschler’s first book, writes an in-depth post about Cycle Savvy that touches on feminism, empowerment, and the conflict between silence and information. She feels the tone is right-on, and she is happy with the frankness of the discussion. But, she points out, “this leads us to the second issue when it comes to marketing Toni’s book: What will teen girls do with this information? Will they start having more unsafe sex? Will they (gulp) try to get pregnant? Shouldn’t we just stick with those awful Kotex pamphlets with advice on staying “tidy†and no mention of the word (whispering) sex? Personally I think this concern is akin to lying to boys about their seminal fluid. You know, ‘If we don’t tell ‘em it makes babies, maybe they won’t buy the condoms and they won’t have the sex!’ I think Weschler is right: The more girls know about their bodies, the more pride they can have in the way they work, and the more likely they will take care of them.” Dawn also adds a postscript to her review, saying how much she appreciates the book’s lack of “unplanned pregnancy will ruin your life” talk. [...]
An important thing I will stress to Noah is that he will have very little control over the decision-making should he get someone pregnant and that he will need to consider this when he’s contemplating having sex.
Oh, how many discussions have Josh and I had about this topic already? And the kid is a year old. Gah. Both Josh and I have stated that we want more openness on the topic than either of us had in our homes.
Nope, an unplanned pregnancy doesn’t ruin your life. But it does throw things into a crisis mode… which can result in things done and said that you can possibly later regret. Gah. That’s why I’m SO all about education now. The thoughts of either the Munchkin or Nicholas going through what I went through is so daunting that I just want the world to hurry up and change.
I’ll support my son, 100%, if he ever experiences an unplanned pregnancy as a father. (Obviously, same with a daughter if I’m ever blessed to raise one of our own.) I wonder how much of this book’s topic you could discuss with a boy in the teenage realm? Obviously, teenage boys cringe at the thought of a period… so, how can we help them be educated about a woman’s cycle, her fertility and the absolute need for safe sex?
Oh, dilemmas.
Hi Dawn-
This is Toni Weschler, the author of Cycle Savvy. I just wanted to let you know that there were scores of women who wrote with their stories of unplanned pregnancies, with a myriad of reactions to it. The logistical dilemma for me as the writer, was editing down all of the amazing and poignant stories about a LOT of teen experiences into enough balanced experiences to address the various topics at hand. But to be honest, the stories were so brutally honest and so educational that I’m considering compiling them for a different book on women’s experiences as teenagers.