This article ran in The Textbook Letter for January-February
1994,
accompanying reviews of a phony "sex education" book. The phony
book -- Sexuality, Commitment & Family -- is promoted to public
schools by Teen-Aid, a religious outfit in Spokane, Washington.
Breasts The mammary glands (breasts) begin to grow during adolescence. The breasts produce, secrete, and store milk after childbirth. The act of natural breast-feeding can suppress the return of ovulation for a considerable length of time following childbirth.
But what do the breasts do before childbirth? Teen-Aid's writers want students to think that a woman's breasts merely make milk, but that is patently false. Breasts must do much more, because they enlarge at puberty and then remain protuberant and conspicuous, regardless of whether the woman reproduces or not. In a female of almost any other species of mammal, the corresponding structures do no such thing -- they enlarge only when the female is suckling young, and they shrink back into inconspicuousness when suckling ends. Why should things be so different in a female human? The answers lie in our mating behavior. First, we are highly visual animals, and many of the sexual signals that we use are visual ones. Second, we humans (unlike most other mammals) typically conduct courtship, and perhaps even mating itself, in postures that expose the front of each partner's body to the other partner's vision and touch. That a woman has permanently enlarged breasts, along with erectile nipples and prominent areolae, can be explained easily if we understand that those breasts function in sexual display, sexual attraction and sexual gratification. It can't be explained at all if we imagine that breasts are merely milk-bags.
Incidentally: Teen-Aid's book never acknowledges the existence of nipples, even in a reproductive context.
William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes often about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.
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