Body Literacy Is the New “Sex Ed”
“If [I]’d known more about fertility earlier in [my] life, [I] might have tried for a family ‘the good, old-fashioned, fun way, … instead of the needles way’” Anna De Souza, a journalist and IVF mother of three, told The Atlantic, in an article calling for a more robust sex education to be implemented in American public education.
De Souza’s experience isn’t an uncommon one in the age of later child-bearing, frozen eggs, and artificial reproductive technologies. And many of the women in De Souza’s shoes are saying the same thing: they wish someone had taught them about their fertility sooner.
While conservatives, appropriately, may be skeptical of anyone in this day and age looking to teach their children about matters having to do with gender, sex, and embodied experience, De Souza and her counterparts do have a point: Americans are growing up and trying to have kids with no idea how fertility functions, let alone how their bodies work in a state of health. If these subjects are not addressed, we risk setting up the next generation to wonder why they are struggling to conceive years down the line. With a growing movement toward preventive medicine and addressing chronic disease head-on instead of offering temporary solutions, many are beginning to ask how we can resolve this knowledge gap while also meeting infertility upstream. The question is, what should young Americans know now so that they can protect and support their fertility later?
Both comprehensive sex education (which emphasizes contraception) and sexual risk avoidance education (which emphasizes abstinence) have historically been laser-focused on teaching adolescents how to avoid pregnancy. Several realities, however, have revealed this to be a short-sighted approach. Numerous studies in the past few years have shown that our teens are graduating from high school with tremendous misconceptions about their reproductive biology. Infertility in American couples is a growing concern, with now up to 16 percent of married women receiving a diagnosis of infertility, as the birthrate continues to decline. If we want strong, traditional families with lots of children tomorrow, we must teach young people to care for their health and fertility today—without defaulting to Big Pharma or IVF as the only path forward. Education in body literacy is one possible solution.
Body Literacy Defined
If literacy is the ability to read—to decode signs and symbols to understand their meaning—then body literacy is simply the ability to understand and interpret the signs and symptoms one’s body offers every day, and to understand their meaning.
Every system in the body is ordered toward our ability to bring new life into the world. So, for both young women and young men, an understanding and protection of hormonal health helps to optimize every other system in the body as well. This, in turn, helps them to sense and address chronic issues far sooner than those without a knowledge of their body’s hormonal health.
Body literacy is distinct from traditional sex education, which can, at its worst, tend to shame fertility, treat it as a disease, or merely focus singularly on hygiene and puberty. Body literacy, conversely, honors fertility as a gift to be stewarded and helps students to understand the connection between their hormonal health (and therefore, fertility) and their overall health. Studies show that knowledge and awareness of physiological patterns increases self-advocacy and health-related decision-making skills across contexts, promoting greater holistic health.
But body illiteracy leaves young people vulnerable in many ways. First, many are entering the sexually active university culture believing that hormonal birth control is infallible and benign, and thus exposing themselves to risks like unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, or long-term harm from extensive use of hormonal birth control. Others may be led to believe that abnormalities like pelvic pain, acne, and hormone imbalance are just “normal” things to be endured and masked with pain relievers and more hormonal birth control.
Various health consequences aside, the other issue is that, when the time comes to start a family, many struggle with conceiving. This is due to patients’ accepting hormonal birth control without full information about its long-term effects. Without the foundational knowledge of how one’s body ought to work in a state of health, and authentic knowledge about the work of one’s natural hormones in maintaining a state of health, young people affect their future fertility without even knowing it. Because of this, far too many turn to the first-offered solution: Artificial Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) like IVF.
Some may argue that education on reproductive health systems and menstruation is best left to parents, not institutions. There is much truth to this view. However, the reality is that most adults in our nation haven’t been taught body literacy either and thus are not equipped to teach their children. Those who pushed artificial birth control portrayed fertility as something to be controlled. This is the mindset that has normalized a culture of casual sex and has been passed down to younger generations.
A culture that shames fertility and hides knowledge about one’s body is no better. While we accuse the left of hiding information or selling quick-fix solutions like the pill to mask underlying reproductive conditions, we are no different. When we reduce sex education to scare tactics without positive formation, we leave our children just as vulnerable as those who were sold contraception during the Sexual Revolution. The mindset is the same: “We know better; we don’t trust you to use this knowledge well, so you don’t get to know.”
By filling this educational void for our students, we can undercut the contraceptive, body-hating culture that teaches that the body is merely matter to be molded according to our every whim. Through body literacy, we help students to recover the reality that authentic health and freedom are found in working with our nature, rather than seeking to control, manipulate, or override it.
So what would a body literacy education look like? For young women, body literacy raises their awareness that they are cyclic beings and that their cycle can serve as a fifth vital sign for their overall health. By teaching women to track biomarkers of menstruation and ovulation, we help them to identify irregularities before they develop chronic symptoms, underlying diseases, or infertility.
Understanding the four phases of the cycle naturally leads to a broader awareness that a woman’s hormones influence nearly every body system. Because hormone receptors exist in almost every tissue, the menstrual cycle has wide-ranging effects on metabolism, bone density, muscle development, gut function, immune balance, and mental health. When young women are taught these interconnections, they gain a powerful framework for evaluating their own well-being. Tracking daily biomarkers—whether by app or on paper—allows them to anticipate fluctuations in mood, energy, cognitive clarity, and nutritional needs. It also enables early detection of potential reproductive disorders.
Young men can be taught about their hormones that respond to stimuli—spiking during challenge and action. This, too, matters if we want to raise men capable of discipline, self-control, and healthy family leadership. Research consistently shows that testosterone thrives in contexts that demand physical presence, effort, and interaction with reality—such as sports, outdoor activity, hands-on labor, and meaningful social competition—and it diminishes when boys spend most of their time in technological environments or virtual spaces, which fail to provide the stimuli the male brain interprets as real-world engagement. Understanding this biological dynamic helps young men make sense of their energy, motivation, and emotional landscape.
Armed with the knowledge of how their mature bodies work, body-literate young people can do what previous generations could not: get ahead of the risk of infertility. Through body literacy, they can reduce their time in treatment, discern the difference between symptom management and root-cause healing, and protect their future health for the sake of their future families. Furthermore, studies show that when at-risk youth are encouraged to consider their long-term goals in the context of body literacy, sexual risk behaviors sharply decline as well. In other words, body literacy achieves the goals conservatives have long wanted—less risky behavior, stronger families—without ceding our children’s education to Planned Parenthood.
If conservatives are serious about addressing America’s fertility crisis, restoring family life, and combating the harms of the Sexual Revolution, they must lead the charge for body literacy education. We can’t just wait until couples show up in their thirties struggling to conceive. We need to meet infertility upstream by teaching young people how their bodies work and how to care for them. That means bringing body literacy into schools, clinics, and homes—not as an optional add-on, but as a foundational piece of health education.
Sex education for youth can no longer present pregnancy as merely something to be avoided. Knowledge of body literacy reframes the conversation, setting the stage for pregnancy when the time is right. By learning to understand their bodies in a state of health, students are now able to protect them to make that future possible. Body literacy is the cornerstone of this holistic approach.
A culture that teaches girls to silence their pain, medicate their cycles, and dismiss the body’s signals is a culture that will inevitably reap infertility, despair, and declining birthrates. A culture that teaches body literacy, by contrast, will raise young people who see their fertility as a vital sign of health and an essential part of their future. That is how conservatives can lead a cultural renewal rooted in truth: by giving young people the tools to honor their fertility, build strong marriages, and form lasting families.
Image licensed via Adobe Stock.