A retired physician explains what the sex ed knowledge gap actually costs — and what changes for kids and families when they finally have the clinical truth.
Most adults didn’t fail sex ed.
They were never actually taught it.
They were given scraps. Jokes. Fear. Memorization. And then sent into life — into healthcare, relationships, puberty, pregnancy, aging — without a real map.
This is a video about what that gap actually costs. And about what changes when you finally have the clinical truth.
The myth most adults are walking around with
Here’s what I think most adults believe, whether they realize it or not: if you learned the basic mechanics — tab A goes into slot B — you learned what you need to know.
The problem is that framing is off from the start.
Tab A and slot B are not matching parts the way people talk about them. For people with a slot B, that’s merely a receptacle — not the matching part to tab A. And when you teach it that way, you teach people with that anatomy to see themselves as a receptacle. Not an active participant. Not a full person with intricate, meaningful, powerful anatomy.
Think about it this way. Simple underwater creatures have one opening — food goes in, everything goes out. More complicated creatures have two ends. Then you get three openings. But women have four — food in, waste out, liquid out, and a separate opening for babies. That is a genuinely remarkable and complicated arrangement. And most women have absolutely no idea. They don’t know how remarkable their bodies actually are.
And when you don’t know that, you don’t know what’s normal. You don’t know what to watch for. You can’t explain symptoms to a doctor. You carry shame about parts of your body you’ve never even been taught to name.
Here are two numbers that should stop all of us in our tracks: only 9% of adults can correctly label all the parts of a vulva. And only 46% can name the three openings in female anatomy.
That is not a personal failing. That is a systems failure.
What I learned in medical school — and why it changed how I practiced
I was terrified of my first well-woman exam. Like many women, I’d had some pretty bad experiences. A lot of awkwardness. A lot of rushing. A lot of just tolerate it.
And then I got to medical school and learned how to do them properly.
Most of my classmates were awkward and rushed — they wanted to get in and get out. I thought: no. This is my one chance to learn to do this well. So I asked the standardized patient everything. What’s more comfortable? How do I help someone with a trauma history? What do I do if the cervix is pointing the wrong way? What words make things worse?
She answered every question. Everyone else in the room learned too, because they were listening while I asked the things nobody else was asking.
I took that approach into my own practice. I designed my exam room to reduce shame and increase understanding. Calico drapes my mom had sewn — flowers and rabbits, not the sterile paper gowns. Hot air balloons on the ceiling. Specula warmed in a drawer heater. And the most important thing: a large hand mirror patients could use to watch what I was doing, if they wanted to.
What I discovered was that the hand mirror was transformative. Because so many women had never actually looked at themselves. They called everything “down there.” Not because they were unintelligent — because no one had ever taught them.
When you don’t have language for your own body, you can’t advocate for yourself. You can’t say “it hurts here.” You can’t say “this is changing.” You can’t say “this doesn’t seem right.”
So I started taking the time to show women their own anatomy. To explain what was normal and what wasn’t. I had an anatomy book with photographs of different vulvas — because most women have never seen another woman’s and quietly believe something is wrong with theirs. Nothing is wrong. They’re all unique.
And this mattered clinically. Because when people don’t look at their own bodies, conditions get missed.
The real cost of not knowing
Three ways this knowledge gap shows up in real life:
Painful exams become traumatic — and then people avoid care entirely. When exams are painful and nobody explains why or what to do differently, people stop going. Things that could be caught early get missed.
Relationships become painful or mismatched — because nobody knows the map. When people don’t understand their anatomy, intimacy can be uncomfortable, painful, or simply less meaningful than it should be. Both people are often guessing. And we send people into something genuinely complicated with less preparation than we give them to drive a car.
Treatable conditions get missed because people don’t know what’s normal. I caught many cases of a condition called lichen sclerosus — an autoimmune condition of the vulva — that had gone unnoticed far too long because the person had never looked at their own body and didn’t know what to watch for. And it’s not only women.
I had men who were too embarrassed to mention pain, discomfort, or other changes because they didn’t have the language and had been taught by our culture that anything less than perfect down there was shameful. Once we started talking about anatomy like it was just anatomy, they could finally say what was going on. And then we could help them.
Why this matters most for parents — and why you have to start earlier than you think
Parents should be the primary source of accurate information for their kids and teens. Not other kids. Not YouTube. Not TikTok. Not whatever they Google at 11pm.
Your kids are piecing together a body map from a worksheet, a rumor, a joke, a meme, a terrified adult, and a search bar. And they need someone who can help them sort out what is propaganda, what is a talking point with an agenda, and what is actually true.
Here’s something I think parents don’t realize: to kids, this stuff is not adult content. It’s only creepy or gross or weird if we make it that way. If you treat the body like any other part of the body, it becomes normal.
My teenage son summed it up perfectly when I asked him what growing up with clinical truth had done for him. He said: “Mom. You took all the fun out of it.”
That is the goal. When kids know the truth, it’s not secret. It’s not forbidden fruit. It’s not gossip. It’s just another part of being human.
And that is protective. Because secrecy is where manipulation thrives. When kids don’t have language, someone else can control the story. When kids don’t know what’s normal, someone else gets to tell them what’s normal.
Parents need to shift their mindset from protecting kids from information to protecting kids from misinformation. The way you do that is not silence. It’s inoculation with good information, early, calmly, and without shame.
You don’t just teach where a child’s nose is and where their fingers are. You teach the whole body. Because the whole body belongs to them.
What Making More Humans actually is
This is why I built Making More Humans.
It’s a comprehensive human reproduction curriculum that covers the whole story — from embryology to pregnancy to contraception to puberty to periods, all the way into menopause — so kids grow up understanding their bodies for life.
And it gives families something even more important than information: language. A shared vocabulary so I can start the conversation, and you can keep it going at home.
It’s built for real family life. Some families watch together. Some parents preview it first using the private podcast version — because listening with earbuds while folding laundry is a lot more realistic than finding time to sit down and watch. Some teens watch independently first and then talk with their parents after.
It’s a one-time purchase with lifetime access. You come back to it. You revisit it when your kid comes home saying “someone at school said this” or “I saw something online.” And instead of a debate about beliefs, you can pull out the relevant lesson and ask: what is clinically true here?
Because this isn’t a belief system. It’s science. And kids who grow up with that foundation can identify misinformation — because they have something real to compare it to.
If you want to learn — and teach — this in a way that’s clinically accurate and shame-free, go to docrobinschool.com/truth.
Educational information only; not medical advice. If you have concerns about your health or your child’s health, please talk with a qualified clinician. If symptoms are severe or urgent, seek urgent/emergency care.
