My twelve-year-old daughter is a slut.
That’s what the writing on the wall says. She’s never actually had a real boyfriend, but she does have boys who are friends. There are a few girls at school who are jealous of those friendships so they do what petty middle school girls do: lash out at her anonymously with markers on bathroom stalls.
My daughter is also pregnant. At least, that’s what one of the middle school rumors currently making the rounds would have you believe. During her last day of seventh grade, she had eaten too much ice cream and while almost everyone else was running around outside playing games, my daughter sat, pale and nauseous in the heat of the afternoon sun. Two of her classmates inquired about how she was feeling, and as they walked away from her, one of them joked with the other about how nausea was a sign of morning sickness and pregnancy.
That simple, stupid comment was all it took to bring a twelve-year-old’s sexual morality into question in front of her peers. While my daughter will soon be thirteen, she easily passes for sixteen because genetics. She’s taller than I am, barely, but her figure is clearly that of a young woman of childbearing age. In a parallel universe, a pregnancy rumor might very well hold the possibility of being true.
In this one, it absolutely doesn’t.
The status of my daughter’s womb became so much of a hot topic by the end of the last day of school that a concerned staff member alerted the school guidance counselor, who in turn contacted me directly to inquire about the health of my daughter and offer support for her and our family if the rumour was not a falsehood.
My initial reaction was visceral. I wasn’t sure what I was more annoyed with: the idea that another student had begun such a ridiculous story in the first place, or the fact that some people actually believed it could hold merit.
Not once did I ever doubt my daughter’s chastity. I know my kid. We’ve had “the talk” so many times she could write a book about sex. Her father and I are both on the same page when it comes to birth control and safe sex; my daughter knows that she can come to me as soon as she’s in a relationship where sex becomes a real possibility, when it’s time for her to get on the pill and buy some condoms. No shame, no judgement, just our standing offer of support for her sexual safety. I realize that kind of forward-thinking is an attitude that many parents will disagree with, but I don’t care. Teens and their raging hormones are like powder kegs resting on the shore of an island that’s surrounded by fire. Abstinence is ideal, but hardly realistic.
In an effort to quell the pregnancy rumor and put the school staff at rest with a definitive, scientifically-proven answer once and for all, I helped my daughter take her very first pregnancy test. That’s not the way I envisioned her first day of summer vacation. Usually it involves her sleeping in until noon and complaining about boredom an hour later. Instead, she pissed on the absorbent tip of a plastic stick and we waited together for the result.
Five minutes passed and I worried when there wasn’t one to report. She was all out of fresh morning pee and there was nothing showing up in the window. Nothing. At the very least, there was supposed to be one pink line for “no.” What the fuck?
Upon closer inspection, I realized that the poorly designed test had spaces on the back that looked like windows. Oh. I had left the test sitting upside down on the bathroom counter.
It was, as we knew it would be, negative.
For all the proof we have to show the world, the middle school rumors about my daughter’s possible pregnancy are out there, regardless. My hope is that, by the end of summer vacation, most people will have forgotten about it. Still, when my daughter begins the eighth grade in September—obviously without child—I worry that there will be some people who will look at her just a little bit differently, wondering about whether or not she had an abortion.
And there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about that.
Middle school (and high school, for that matter) is hard enough as it is without bullshit rumors that get started on a whim. Girls are especially tough because while boys will tend to use their fists, girls use their wicked words without a care for consequence. That old adage, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” is a crock of festering shit. Words can hurt. Not only do they have the power to cause emotional wounds, but they can fucking desecrate a girl’s reputation in less than a day’s time.
I hate that my daughter knows that first-hand.
Still, there is something positive to come out of this experience, and thankfully it wasn’t a pregnancy test result. She has gained a valuable lesson in how little effort it takes to harm another person with a few careless words. In the end, I know she’ll be a better person because of it.
11 Comments
I cannot imagine how devastating this must be for your daughter. But I am confused as to why you had her take a pregnancy test. Did you take it somewhere and show others the results? To me, it seems it might be misconstrued by your daughter as a sign of your mistrust in her word. As her mother, a simple and firm “No, she is not” should be enough to answer questions for anyone asking. I applaud and share your forward thinking on sexual safety and preparedness, I imagine families of the girls starting these rumors still see sex as a taboo subject.
We did it because we felt the test itself would be stronger than our word if it ever came down to it. I guess there’s a part of me who has heard “Oh, my kid would never steal” or “Oh, my kid would never punch another kid” too many times from parents who don’t know their kids as they thought they did, and I worried that some people might feel the same about our own claims. We thought that irrefutable proof would be a more powerful tool for putting the rumors to rest. She knows we never questioned her, or at least I hope she does – we laughed at the ridiculousness together; the whole thing was surreal. We didn’t take the physical test to the school, but we did share the results with the guidance counselor so she could let the involved staff members know with absolute certainty that there was nothing to worry about.
Ugh. I hate that this happened to your daughter AND to you. What a horrible thing to have to endure, both as a parent and for a child. Girls can be SO fucking mean. I am so sorry. Your daughter sounds like a wonderful, intelligent, beam of sunshine and I hope this passes as none other than one of the shitty life experiences we all have jotted in our memory. Or, she decks them in the face. Okay, maybe not the latter…
That’s what I hope, too. Gods forbid she ever have to go through something similar with her own daughter one day, she’ll certainly be able to empathize.
I always say it, and will continue to, until it stops. Girls can be such catty bitches.
They really can, Missy! I don’t remember having too so bad when we were in school, but maybe I just didn’t get to experience all those finer points. (Or, I was oblivious to any rumors about myself. Entirely possible since I live in my own little world.) I do remember that the girls had it so much rougher in our high school – not just with the rumors but the physical fights, even. They were always more brutal than the boys.
Feeling hurt and sad that had to happen. But extremely proud of the way you guys handled it and in sharing this who knows how many others will find support and help with same/similar situations.
Thanks. 🙂 I hope so, too. Talking about it with others has definitely been an eye-opening experience; it’s a shame that so many people have gone through similar things. Those experiences certainly build strength and character if we let them, though.
Alison that’s horrible that your daughter has been put through that. I too applaud that you have had such open discussions with your daughter. My eldest is 11 1/2 and we’re still working on the puberty discussions, but also including my 9 year old as I am realizing I started way too late. I really hope that it is better for her in the fall. As someone who was bullied in high school, I am glad that she knows her mom is on her side and that she can talk openly with you – it makes all the difference
It really does make a difference. She doesn’t always open up right away, but I’ve found that if we go and do something together, alone, like a walk in the woods or a dinner-date out just the two of us, it opens up the lines of communication almost immediately. I think when we confide in our daughters about the things we went through at their ages, whether it’s bullying or boy troubles, it shows them that they’re not alone in their experiences and they’re more open to sharing their own with us, giving us an opportunity to help them. A parent is still a parent, but there’s something to be said about being able to talk with our daughters as friends.
I am reading this 2 years after your post and going through the same situation with my 11 year old. My daughter is funny, goofy, beautiful, but most important smart. She is 11 years old in the sixth grade but looks like she’s 16, gotta love hormones. My daughter tends to friend people whom she shouldn’t, or should I say, trust people with whom she shouldn’t. Today I received a call at work from my daughters school counselor. She told me that my daughter had jokingly said “oh yeah I am pregnant” to her best friend when another “friend” was listening in. Now, her response was to her friend asking if everything was ok because she looked pale. She had been feeling sick the night before but didn’t have a fever or anything. There was talk back and forth between my daughter and her best friend joking about not feeling good, but I’d agree that my daughter took it too far even in her innocence. My daughter is not sexually active but sometimes she response with sarcasm to get a reaction. The so called “friend” listening in decided to spread the rumor. I feel so bad for my daughter, who unknowingly created this chaos for herself. I’m not sure if I am asking for guidance from anyone else or if I just needed to vent for my daughter. My daughter, being the outgoing person she is always seems to be the middle of all the rumors.