I knew when I set out to write a piece for the Guardian about including infertility into the school sex education curriculum that it was a contentious issue, but hadn't anticipated how angry the idea would make some people.
None of the people I interviewed were suggesting any hugely radical changes, just mooting the thought that including some teaching about fertility awareness at school might be helpful. It became apparent during my research that sex education isn't always as good as it could be, and that young people are often left confused about reproduction and fertility. Even any worries about sending potentially confusing messages by teaching about infertility were allayed when it became apparent that including this as part of a coherent well-planned sex education programme would probably help to reduce teenage pregnancies, rather than encouraging young people to take risks.
So why did the suggestion make some people so cross? I've always been fascinated as to why any mention of infertility sends a small percentage of the population - often those with quite a few naturally-conceived children of their own - into some kind of mental tail spin. Not only did many people start raging at the very thought of mentioning infertility to young people, there were also the by-now-all-too-familiar rants about infertility itself. What on earth induced one person to say that we should be "grateful" for infertility in the light of our rising world population? Imagine changing that a little and suggesting we should be "grateful" for heart disease or cancer in the light of population growth...
One of the tweets I received after the piece summed it up for me, saying that the comments alone showed that infertility should be included into the sex education curriculum to encourage more understanding if nothing else - and with that, I would most certainly agree...
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