Sex education advocates push back after Chinese parent denounces reproductive anatomy lesson in primary school

A Chinese mother of a nine-year-old girl recently shared her indignation over how her child was taught about human anatomy and reproduction at school, accusing her daughter’s teacher of providing sex education too early.

Her complaint, however, was swiftly dismissed as prudish and backward by an overwhelming number of people on social media, who leveraged the situation to call for more candid conversations about sex in Chinese classrooms.

According to a series of screenshots of WeChat messages shared by the parent, she decided to reach out to the teacher after her daughter came home from school one day, telling her what she learned about “pregnancy” and “anatomical differences between men and women.”

“My daughter is clearly below the age when she can listen to this kind of stuff. Also, there are both boys and girls in the class. It never crossed your mind that this conversation should be held without the presence of boys?” she wrote.

The teacher explained that because one of the girl’s instructors was pregnant and the students were asking questions about it, she thought it was a “good opportunity” to teach them about issues relating to human sexuality.

The exchange ended with the parent stating that she would take the issue to the school’s principal.

When the post made its way to Weibo, it quickly went viral. As of today, the main hashtag associated with the issue, “Teacher faces complaints from a parent after teaching kids about pregnancy” (#老师教孩子怀孕知识被家长吐槽#), has accumulated over 900 million views and roughly 44,000 comments, most of which were in favor of the teacher’s approach to sex education.

“Pedophiles never think a child is too young to assault,” wrote (in Chinese) one person. Another response read, “This is beyond stupid and ignorant. Everything said by the teacher is age appropriate. Actually, schools need more teachers like this one, who understands the importance of sex education for young children and is good at answering sex-related questions in a responsible way.”

Although the State Council, China’s Cabinet, urged all schools to make sexual and reproductive health education part of their compulsory curriculums in 2011, lessons covering sex-related topics are still limited and not offered at all in many Chinese schools. The lack of such teaching is caused by a variety of factors, predominantly the reluctance of many teachers to mention sex in classrooms and regular backlash from conservative parents. For example, in 2017, a primary school in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, stopped using a sex education textbook after receiving complaints from concerned parents, who regarded the book’s explicit illustrations of reproductive organs as inappropriate.