Pregnancy Prevention: What Does Your Son Know?
Preventing pregnancy involves both parties being clearly informed. What does your son know about eggs in a girl’s ovaries? Do you think it is important for your son to know something about girl reproductive anatomy?
Boys could benefit from learning more about girl reproductive anatomy. Parents and the schools emphasize how important it is to use a condom when having a sexual relationship with a girl, but does your son understand that an egg from the ovaries is the number one reason for the concern?
Our sons would be more willing to use a condom if they conceptualized how it helps prevent pregnancy. When they realize there are about 40 million sperm in one ejaculation all fighting to get to a single egg, they will pay attention to the details.
After an egg is released from an ovary, it waits about a day at the beginning of the fallopian tube before it continues its journey to the uterus. Only about 50-100 sperm make it to find the egg because most of them die in the competition. Even though that number is much less than 40 million, it only takes one egg joining with one sperm for conception to happen.
In this anatomy figure from my book, I’m a Boy, Hormones!, you can follow the pathway of sperm from the vagina to the fallopian tube in search of an egg.
It should be made clear to him that a condom provides a physical barrier so sperm cannot get into the vagina and make their way to the egg.
The more our sons understand, we can hope they will make wiser choices as they mature!
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