Woman's Hour - Parenting: Breasts

Episode Date: February 6, 2019

Emma Pickett, author of The Breast Book and a former deputy head teacher says that girls and boys aren’t being taught properly about breasts. She joins Jane along with Ruby Stevenson from Brook, the sexual health and well being charity for young people, to talk about how children are informed and to give advice for parents.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and welcome to the Woman's Hour Parenting Podcast, which this week is about breasts and about how we talk, specifically about how we talk to children about breasts as they develop. And it actually became a really interesting conversation about the position of breasts in British public life. And there's additional material at the end. So I hope you can stay with us. Loads of emails and tweets from you, which is great. And my guests on the subject were Ruby Stevenson from Brook, which is the sexual

health and wellbeing charity for young people, and former teacher Emma Pickett, the author of The Breast Book. So I mentioned that Britain has always been, well, a bit odd about breasts in a kind of cartoonish way. And that page three, of course, was a thing until very recently. So lots of mixed messages given out. And this is where we started the conversation with Emma. We're in a real muddle in the UK when it comes to talking about breasts. When we talk to young people about breasts, we give this message that it's about sexualization and attracting often the opposite sex but at the same time it's a bit secret as well so breasts are hidden away but yet also attract people that's incredibly confusing then we also forget to talk about the function of breasts so if there's this big vacuum in the middle of the conversation where

in that vacuum gets filled with toxic messages that often the commercial world is controlling you know it's easy to talk about social media in this context, but photoshopping and advertising, girls are getting all these toxic messages and nothing is replacing it. And we're not able to steer the conversation in the right direction unless we take more control. I think it's a really interesting subject. Ruby, you're out there and you're talking to young people. How often do they ask questions in your sessions about puberty with relatively young kids? How often do they ask about breasts?

So when I'm talking about puberty, breasts do come up, but actually we don't speak about them as much as we used to. I'm seeing a sort of shift in the ideal female body type. I think the Kardashians have had a big influence on that. Now when I'm in schools, it's all about a big bum and hips and thighs and a tiny waist. And I think that the conversation about breasts has kind of become even more invisible. So I'll get younger women who come up to me after classes asking me questions about what's normal and when can they expect to develop breasts.

And it's very much about being normal is the desire. What do they think of, though, as normal? Might not be the normal I thought of as normal. I don't know what this normal is. I think it's just the desire to be as status quo as possible so to get boobs at the right time whatever that is and there isn't a right time but we just need to do more work to educate people about that and for them to be symmetrical because they're the only breasts that we end up seeing in media and all kind of forms of imagery and just making sure that they feel comfortable with the body that they have, I think, is very important for Brooke's perspective.

Right. OK. Does it concern you, Emma, that the young people that Ruby is speaking to seem to be getting these messages and they've clearly absorbed the Kardashian effect? Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's not surprising because there's a bit of a national conspiracy when it comes to breasts we pretend that they are symmetrical and high and nipples are hidden away you know we pretend that even larger women who we might see now more in clothing campaigns or in you know modeling situations they still have these large high breasts that don't move around breasts aren't allowed to wobble if you get on the bus and you've got large breasts and you don't have a bra on, guaranteed you're going to get a lot of people staring at you. You know, breasts are meant to be immobile, round and symmetrical. When we know in fact in real life, lots of women have a different breast size. You know, cup size difference

is completely standard. Nipples can stick out on cold days. Nipples have bumps around them called Montgomery's glands around the areola. That frightens a lot of young people. And breasts can be saggy, even for quite young people. A saggy breast is normal. So Chidira Egaru, the slum flower, talks about, you know, hashtag saggy boobs matter. But we're not allowed to talk about those things comfortably with young people. And they do struggle. Let me bring the listeners in.

Ray says, breasts sum a mum to four boys aged between 11 and 1. They've grown up seeing breasts as the way we feed babies. From Chrissy, I breastfeed my four-year-old. We recently had to explain to her 10-year-old brother that men like boobs sexually. Well, he was horrified. He said they're to feed babies and children and anything else

is just gross. I have to say that there is a chance that young lad might change his mind. But Jade, breastfeeding, does that ever crop up in your sessions with young people? No, it doesn't crop up from a desire from the young people or really from a desire from schools as well. There is so much to cover in relationship and sex education. And unfortunately, we are given a really squeezed amount of time to deliver all of that content so our objective is to talk about the things that are the most relevant to young people's lives at that time i wish that there was more time to talk about fertility and to talk about breastfeeding and talk about

how bodies change at later stages in life but unfortunately the structure that we have right now means that young people don't really have access to that information during school time i'm sorry i got your name wrong by the way Isn't it weird that we're not talking about it, though? Because how can you talk about breasts and not at least throw in some reference to breastfeeding? I mean, how many times in school did we draw the digestive tract? I must have drawn the structure of the heart about 25 times, but it wasn't until I came to breastfeeding

that I realised that milk comes out of more than one hole around the nipple. I thought it was going to be a little single hose in the centre rather than the shower head. And doctors don't know that either. I thought it was going to be a little single hose in the centre rather than the shower head. And doctors don't know that either. I was talking to someone the other day who's involved in doctor education and she tells me at the end of a session, quite often doctors come up to her and say, oh, I didn't realise milk came out of more than one hole.

And you might think that an 11-year-old doesn't need to know that, but then why not? It takes 10 seconds to give that information. It might mean that when they're a mother 10 years later, they feel so much more relaxed about their own bodies. I want to, at this point, mention that next week on the programme we are talking about feeding your baby, why you fed your baby the way you did.

Obviously breastfeeding is one option, bottle feeding is another, and people do what they do, and we'll be discussing all that next week on the programme. And there's a phone-in next Wednesday on that subject, which I'm really looking forward to. We're doing it with our friends at BBC Radio Sheffield. So that's next week on the programme and there's a phone in next Wednesday on that subject which I'm really looking forward to. We're doing it with our friends at BBC Radio Sheffield so that's next week on Woman's Hour.

It was really, a listener who came on the programme a couple of weeks ago really struck a nerve with our audience because she was a lady called Melanie who'd had breast cancer, had a mastectomy and Emma she simply refused, she didn't want reconstruction and she was

looking for a one, a bra for a one breasted woman. There is no, I mean, I appreciate your book is for young children, the breast book. There isn't any mention of cancer. But what really Melanie was talking about was the idea of body perfection, and the fact that we are still as a society, ill prepared for women who just say, no, I'm not going to do what you want me to do. I'm going to be me, a woman who's survived breast cancer. Yeah, I mean, challenging the rules, I think that's the most important thing, message we can give to our children.

I mean, the idea that we must all wear a bra, even if you haven't necessarily been through breast cancer. Why is it that we assume every young girl who starts to develop a bump must then traipse along to the department store and get measured up? I mean, we think that's something to do with breast support. We think it's about breast health. But actually, if you drill down, it's more often about hiding a breast away. It's about a nipple being invisible. It's about a bump not being visible through your clothing. It's because breasts are sexualised. Young girls, sexualisation, panic. Yeah.

No, you're right. And feeling hidden away makes people feel safe. But it can be achieved with a crop top, can be achieved with a decent vest. I think we sometimes think that bras have to be more structured than perhaps they are. Of course, bras are relatively recent inventions, aren't they? Yeah. So if you look at what we've done as a society and as a culture,

we have flipped backwards and forwards between wearing bras and not wearing bras. I was reading the other day about Queen Elizabeth, the first meeting, a Spanish ambassador with a dress slashed down to a navel, a breast completely exposed. Not accidentally. That was her idea of fashion. You know, it really flips around, doesn't it? What we're allowed to do with our breasts. The 50s pointy thing going on and pointy bras and Madonna's pointy bras bras where you know where's this coming from it's not often not women making these decisions um it's often people sitting in a you know in a boardroom deciding the next product and pushing that product but ruby can you imagine um telling those young people you speak to that not wearing a bra is indeed an option yeah i i think yeah i've definitely spoken about that in classrooms before

because when we're presenting information about puberty and hygiene and how to maintain your body as it's changing and developing, we're not giving any solid rules. We're providing people with information and guidance and the best forms of relationship and sex education are where young people feel informed and empowered and they can make their own decisions. So I wouldn't say you shouldn't wear a bra,

but just a sentence saying, some people choose to wear bras when their breasts start to develop, other people don't. That's just planting a seed and letting a young person have a little bit more agency to make their own decision that's right for them. Go on, Emma. I love the idea of, you know, it's your call.

I mean, how many of us say to our girls, right, should we go to the shop now and have a look at bras? Just to say, you know, what are the options? What's everyone else doing? Have a think. You know, you don't have to be like everybody else. Well, weren't we all that teenage girl? You wanted your first bra. You're now questioning my thought pattern back in 1970,

whatever it was. That might be the case then. So a 13-year-old might not want to go out and not wear a bra and be different from other people but what you're doing there is providing them with information that might inform their choices a bit later on so say when they're 17 and they're a little bit more comfortable with their body they might then be informed by those previous conversations and chats and want to do something that they feel a bit more empowered to do and technology changes bra technology changes i mean

the bras that we brought brought are not the ones that you can buy now i mean you know social media is not what we think it is we need to talk to teenagers like they're doing in hackney council having snapchat lessons from teenagers you know we need to talk to teenagers about what's out there and you know what's happening so brief actually just briefly explain this is something where young people are teaching old people how so teenagers have actually gone into hackney council and they're sitting with the staff saying you know this is snapchat this is how snapchat this is what I see on yeah and these are the filters so you know snapchat and instagram are both mediums where it's all about the visual it's all and it's all about a photograph that can be highly manipulated you know we're not talking

about Kim Kardashian we're talking about you know Yvonne from Hackney who's 15 she can play around with her images she can make her breasts look higher or even or, you know, hide her nipples away. And young women are filtering their own images, photoshopping them and showing them to their friends. And it's that drip drip of going onto Snapchat 10 times a day, you're seeing all these images, they're all going into your brain and you're absorbing that that's a normal breast. You know, when we were younger, we used to worry about billboards and advertisements, you know, magazines and billboards were the things that influenced us. Now these girls have got their their billboards and advertisements in their pockets on their nightstands going on holiday with them. You know, just that drip drip of what a woman's body should look like is just everywhere.

Let's read some of the emails that have come in very many of them actually. Sue, dead easy breasts are for feeding babies, Then you breastfeed in front of your children. So that idea is firmly in their heads. Any secondary meaning comes later when they're old enough to discuss it properly. It worked for my six kids, says Sue. Marcia, really interesting discussion on breasts and bras and the idea that young girls should have a choice whether to wear a bra or not. My daughter's 12 and she feels quite comfortable in a crop top, not because it's sexy or trendy,

but because it gives that layer of comfort and protection during that excruciatingly sensitive and painful time when your breasts are growing. Do you remember that feeling, says Marcia? I think a lot of women will. From Lisa, I've just spoken actually this week to my daughter who's 12 and asked if she wanted to go for a bra. She now has quite small breasts, even though she is slim.

But she said, no, I just wear a crop top on PE days. I said that if or when she does want to go, I'm happy to go with her and she just needs to tell me when she's ready. I will now wait for her to come to me. And I guess that, Emma, is what you should do, isn't it? Yeah, that's the ideal, isn't it? I mean, just dangling in there as a conversation and just saying, you know, whatever you want to do,

I'm not pushing you either way, you know, you get to decide. And also I would just add that it's not just a conversation to have with girls. You know, boys around adolescence often get chest changes as well. Boys will get tingly nipples and lumps behind the nipple. And it's often even more terrifying for them because that's not something they even thought was on the cards. So I do think we should be talking about boys as well as girls when it comes to breast changes.

This is very sad, actually. I'm a listener who don't need to mention the name. My daughter, who's now 50, was always unhappy as a teenager about her small breasts. She went to the doctor who didn't examine her and he talked to her about not needing to have have large breasts to be a woman and she did accept this but she was still unhappy when she went to australia and paid privately at 40 for breast enhancement she was told by the consultant that he was amazed the nhs hadn't done this

as she had something called tubular breast syndrome uh horribly nicknamed snoopy breasts she finally told me all about this this year in my view she had 20 years plus of utter misery unnecessarily because of this breasts do matter yeah i actually interviewed somebody in the book with tubular breast syndrome i've never heard of that it's sometimes it's called um hyperplasia or insufficient glandular tissue. And your breasts look essentially like long smarty tubes. And at the end, you have a bulging areola and a bulging nipple. And it's going to make breastfeeding very challenging, which is why as a lactation consultant, I'll come across them. And the actual person I spoke to in the book was actually blind and blind from birth.

But she sensed that her breasts weren't quite right just from reactions that people gave her and things she was hearing other people say about breasts. They weren't filling out her bra. She knew something wasn't right. And she went to her aging GP and bless his cotton socks. She said, listen, I don't know what breasts look like, but if I just take my top off, will you tell me if this is right? She took her top off and he went, actually, kind of no, actually, that isn't what I would expect a breast to look like. So on the NHS, she got some surgery in her early 20s. And you can't do an implant straight away

because the tissue just won't accept it. The skin can't stretch when you're already that tubular shape. So a sack is implanted and a valve is left open under the armpit and small amounts of water is added over a period of time. And now she's much happier, although had a horrible breastfeeding experience as a result of that because people saw her breasts from the outside, thought she could breastfeed normally,

and in fact her condition made it difficult for her to make enough milk. I was wondering whether, every family is different, every family unit is different. Does it help, Ruby, with kids growing up hoping that they won't have hang-ups? Would it help them if you allowed them to see adult, their mum and dad, or their mum or their dad, with no clothes on?

Certainly not inappropriately, but, you know, to not have too much secrecy around what adult human bodies look like. I think that's really important, but I don't think parents need to be nude in front of their children all of the time or not often in order for that to happen. So from my personal experience, I grew up in a family where everyone was very comfortably nude and I do have a positive attitude to nudity. But that doesn't necessarily work for everyone. So for some people who are young, that might really not be a thing that makes them feel comfortable and they don't want to be around a parent if they're nude. So I think we need to give as much agency to children as possible about being able to have some say in those decisions. But even if you're not being nude around children, there are still lots of ways of normalising nudity and not making a big deal out of it without physically demonstrating it.

Here's an email from Holly. My three-year-old son recently asked about my breasts as I deal out of it without physically demonstrating it. Here's an email from Holly. My three-year-old son recently asked about my breasts as I got out of the shower. I took this opportunity to explain that they were to make milk for babies like cows udders and that I will use them to feed his baby brother when he comes. He actually found this hilarious. I was horrified to hear that sex education doesn't cover the actual purpose of breasts. How can you understand and accept a changing body if you don't understand the purpose, the reason it's changing? I am so psychologically comfortable in my changing pregnant body because it's doing something incredible.

And puberty is the first step towards this. That's a good point. There's such a gap in education at the moment. I read the guidance, the new guidance that's coming out, compulsory in 2020, and it's pretty bleak reading, the sex education guidance. I mean, obviously lots of very serious topics have to be covered. It would be really nice if breastfeeding was in there.

Not a word, not even the word breast. It's not in the science curriculum. It's not in the proposed sex and relationships education. There are some innovators doing it. So Ayrshire in Scotland have paid the breastfeeding network to do some work in schools on breastfeeding. And you get little pockets of teachers who are taking advantage to squeeze it in where they can. But it's not our standard, which seems so odd. It's such a big part of who we are.

That's a good point. I mean, no wonder they say that people are concerned by the low levels of breastfeeding rates in Britain. That might be one of the reasons. There's a fabulous fact in your book. It's just come shot back into my consciousness that whales have mammary glands the size of. Do you remember? Baby elephants. I'm glad you remembered because I was going to try and do it on the programme, but I forgot. So let's just repeat that for anybody who didn't pick it up um whales have mammary glands the size of baby elephants everybody and tiny little bats the size of bumblebees also have mammary glands mammals are clever they really are and we'll end with this one from a listener called ala i hope i've

pronounced that right apologies if i haven't one of my daughters not yet a teenager in the late 80s i wasn't at all interested in wearing a bra, but instead she said, Mummy, Mummy, when can I wear shoulder pads? There you go. It was the 80s.

Thank you. Thank you. Follow the last hurdle there. Thank you very much, Emma. And indeed, Ruby, who I felt often compelled to call Jade, but you're not.

You're very much Ruby. Get there in the end. You're forgiven. Thank you both very much. And if you have something you'd like us to get there in the end you're forgiven uh thank you both very much and if you have something you'd like us to talk about on the Woman's Hour Parenting Podcast you must email us through the website bbc.co.uk slash woman's hour I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered there was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.

I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.