March 12th, 2009

The sex of the baby depends on the father’s sperm. Some sperm have what scientists call an ‘x factor’, which means they are capable of uniting with an ovum and making a female baby. Other sperm have a ‘y factor’, which means that they are capable of uniting with an ovum and making a male baby. If a y-factor sperm fertilizes the ovum, the baby will be a boy. If an x-factor sperm fertilizes the ovum, the baby will be a girl.

How long is a woman pregnant before she has a baby?

A woman is usually pregnant for about nine months. However, sometimes pregnancy can last for a little longer or a little less than nine months. If the baby isn’t born by the end of nine months, the doctor will carefully watch the woman for a few weeks or so. If the baby still isn’t born, the doctor may give the woman some medication that will make her have the baby because it isn’t healthy for the baby to stay in the uterus too long. But, this is unusual and most babies are born by the end of, at most, ten months.

Sometimes a pregnancy will last for less than nine months. If the baby is born at the end of only eight months or earlier, we say it is ‘premature’ or ‘pre-term’. Premature babies sometimes need special medical care, and if a baby is born too prematurely, before six months or so, its chances of surviving are much lower.

*76\95\2*

Like boys, girls begin to make new hormones in their bodies during puberty there’s a gland in a boy’s brain called the pituitary gland, and a few years before puberty it starts to make small amounts of certain hormones. These hormones travel to a boy’s testicles and cause them to start making a hormone of their own, called testosterone. At first, neither his pituitary nor his testicles make very much hormone, but as he grows older, a boy makes increasing amounts of pituitary hormones in his brain. This, in turn, causes his testicles to make more and more testosterone. The testosterone travels to other parts of his body and causes changes such as the enlargement of his penis and scrotum, the growth of pubic, facial and body hair, and the lowering of his voice.

Girls, too, have pituitary glands in their brains. A few years before puberty begins, a girl’s pituitary gland starts making the same hormones that a boy’s pituitary makes. In girls, though, these pituitary hormones travel to the ovaries. Like the testicles, the ovaries are also glands and are also capable of making hormones. One of the hormones that a girl’s ovaries make is called oestrogen.

As she grows older, a girl’s brain makes increasing amounts of pituitary hormone. This, in turn, causes her ovaries to make increasing amounts of oestrogen. Just as testosterone from a boy’s testicles travels to other parts of his body and causes puberty changes like pubic hair and the growth of his penis, so oestrogen from a girl’s ovaries travels to other parts of her body and causes certain puberty changes. For instance, oestrogen is responsible for the growth of her pubic hair and the development of her breasts.

Oestrogen also causes changes on the inside of a girl’s uterus. The uterus is a hollow organ. The inside walls of the uterus are covered by a special lining. Before puberty, this lining is very thin. When puberty starts and a girl is making increasing amounts of oestrogen, this lining begins to grow thicker. It becomes very spongy and soft and fills with blood. By the time a girl has begun her growth spurt, sprouted pubic hair and developed breasts, the lining of her uterus has grown quite thick.

Like the other changes that happen during puberty, this takes place because a girl’s body is getting ready for a time in her life when she may decide to have a baby. When and if she does become pregnant, this lining is very important. After her ovum is fertilized by a sperm in the Fallopian tube, it will travel to the uterus and plant itself in the thick lining there. The lining will provide the blood and nutrients a fertilized ovum needs in order to grow into a baby.

*61\95\2*

Some boys have their first experience of masturbation by watching other boys, and it’s not unusual for groups of boys to masturbate together. Some boys also experiment with masturbation by touching another boy’s penis, by masturbating another boy to the point of orgasm or by letting another boy masturbate them. Boys who do this often worry about whether this is odd. Sometimes they think that this means that they are homosexual.

Homosexuals are people who prefer to have sexual contacts with people who are the same sex as they are. Most adults in our society are heterosexuals, which means that they prefer to have sexual experiences with people of the opposite sex. Now you should know that many boys engage in some form of what we call ‘sex play’ with other boys as they’re growing up, just as some girls engage in sex play with other girls, and some children engage in sex play with children of the opposite sex as they’re growing up. None of these sexual experiences is at all odd in the sense of being uncommon or unusual.

*48\95\2*

THE EPIDIDYMIS AND THE VAS DEFERENS

After the sperm are made, they travel from the tubules inside the testicle to the epididymis, a special compartment attached to the testicle. The epididymis is also composed of tiny tubes. It is here, inside these tubes, that the sperm ripen into mature sperm. It takes the sperm about four to six weeks to travel through the epididymis, during which time they complete their ripening.

The vas deferens-Once they’re fully mature, the sperm are ready to travel out of the scrotal sac and up into the body, where they are stored until you ejaculate. To get from the scrotum to the main part of your body, the sperm travel through a tube called the vas deferens (also called the vas or sperm duct). You have two sperm ducts, one for each testicle. Each one is 355-455 mm (14-18 in) long.

Perhaps you’ve wondered why the testicles and scrotum hang down, outside and away from the main part of your body. As one boy in our class put it:

Why do they dangle down there like that where they can get hit and knocked about? Why aren’t they tucked up inside your body where they’d be safe?

It’s a good question, and there’s a good answer. In order for your testicles to make sperm, they have to be at exactly the right temperature. The right temperature is a little lower than the temperature of the rest of your body. If your testicles were up inside your body, they’d get too hot to make sperm. So, instead, they hang down in the scrotal sac, away from your body. This way air can circulate around them and keep them cool. In cold weather or when you jump into cold water, the scrotum tightens up, bringing your testicles closer to your body for extra warmth. In hot weather, after a hot bath or when you have a fever, the scrotum relaxes and hangs lower so that your testicles are farther away from your body and can stay cool.

*35\95\2*

One thing that men mentioned over and over again was their height. Except for those who were very tall, almost all of the men we interviewed said they wished they were a bit taller. Even if they were of average height (1.75 m/5 ft 9 in) or even taller than average, they often said they ‘wouldn’t mind’ being a bit taller. The men who were shorter than average almost always said they wished they were taller. As one man put it:

I’m only 1.67 m (5 ft 6 in) and being short has always bothered me. People make cracks, call you ‘shrimp’ or ‘shortie’. I’m really co-ordinated and good at sports. Being short made it difficult to get into the school team. I guess I compensated by getting into weight lifting and concentrating on wrestling. In a way, though, now that I am older, it turns out that being short was sort of an advantage because it made really concentrating on working out and developing a strong, muscular body a habit that’s stayed with me. I still work out and I’m in great physical shape, whereas a lot of men my age, the ones who were tall in school, are overweight and flabby and out of shape. I’m healthier than a lot of men, and maybe if I’d been taller I wouldn’t have got into working out and taking care of my body. Still, to tell the truth, I still wish I were taller.

Harold, age 34

Another man had this to say:

No doubt about it, being tall is an advantage. People look up to you. I think being short is a disadvantage, in sports, with girls . . . and in other ways. Short men have a lot of problems to contend with that just aren’t there for tall men.

Hank,age 20

Not all short men are bothered by their lack of height:

I’ve always been short, even as a kid, so I’ve had a whole lifetime to adjust and it’s really not a problem for me like it is for some men. I know lots of short men who are always kind of cocky, on the defensive, who talk loud or always act the clown or are brash or pushy. They’re sort of making up for the fact that they’re short, acting big so that people will notice them, like they might get missed or passed over because they’re short. But I don’t really feel that need. I’m short and I’m a pretty quiet person, but I still feel that people take note of me because I’m at ease with myself the way I am. I think people notice or feel that kind of satisfaction when you’re at peace with yourself and accept yourself the way you are.

Rick, age 39

And tall men aren’t always happy about their height:

I’m 2 m (6 ft 7 in) and I’m always looking down on other people. People are always saying stupid things like, ‘How is the weather up there?’ I was this tall when I was 14, and I always felt like a freak. I kind of slouched and hunched over, trying not to look so tall. My mother was always yelling at me to stand up straight. I ^till have terrible posture. I’m in my forties now, so it’s not so bad any more. There are little inconveniences, like bumping your head and trying to scrunch into cars, but it’s not like when I was a teenager. It really bothered me then. Being different was difficult.

Frank, age 43

But being short can pose problems, as Rick explains:

There’s a sort of unwritten rule that the man has to be taller than the girl. All the girls were always taller than me, so I realized early on that I wasn’t going to pay attention to that rule because if I asked out only girls who were shorter than me . . . well, I wouldn’t have gone out on too many dates. So I just ignored that rule and asked out whomever I wanted. I got turned down sometimes, just on account of my height. There were girls, and later women, who even though they’d go out with me were bothered by my being short. They’d wear flat-heeled shoes instead of the high heels they probably would have worn. But once I got involved with someone, you know, seriously, we’d kid around and it was never a real problem. It’s true that a lot of people follow this rule about the man having to be taller, and it does affect you. Maybe it’s a little harder to get a date, to find a girl who isn’t uptight about it. My wife, by the way, is 127 mm (5 in) taller than me and wears high heels, and it doesn’t bother her that there’s a difference in our height. It is breaking that unwritten law, though, and people do look at us. I figure that’s their problem.

Rick, age 39

Rick has a healthy attitude about himself and doesn’t seem to worry about what other people think. But there’s no getting round the fact that our society attaches a lot of importance to a man’s height. In fact, many people are prejudiced against short men. You’re probably familiar with racial prejudice. People who have racial prejudices make judgements about or discriminate against people whose skin is a different colour from theirs. They prejudge (‘prejudice’ means ‘to prejudge’) people of other races and make assumptions about what they are like before they even meet or get to know anything about them as individuals. Prejudice against short men isn’t as obvious or as talked about as racial prejudice, but it does exist and can cause problems. For example, studies have shown that if two equally qualified men apply for a job and one is tall and the other short, the tall man is more likely to get the job, simply because he’s tall.

In other studies researchers have given people photographs of a tall man and a short man and asked them to write descriptions of what they think these men are like based on the photos. The researchers found that people tend to describe the tall man in more positive terms, using words like ‘brave’, ‘sincere’, ‘handsome’, ‘successful’, and so on. They tend to describe the short man in less positive or even negative terms: ‘not so successful’, ‘insecure’, ‘dishonest’, and so on.

Given the kinds of prejudices some (not all, but some) people have, it’s not surprising that short men often wish they were taller. The truth of the matter is that your height doesn’t have anything to do with your worth as a person and it doesn’t have anything to do with how successful you may become. Think of the many shorter-than-average men who have become famous stars, men like actors Dustin Hoffman and Dudley Moore, dancer Wayne Sleep and rock star Bruce Springsteen among many others. Of course, knowing this fact intellectually is a lot easier than really believing it with your heart and feeling happy about yourself if you’re short. It helps to remember what Rick said about people responding to a person who has the inner satisfaction and confidence that comes from accepting himself the way he is. It’s true. If you learn to accept yourself, to take pride in your unique self, then other people will too.

*21\95\2*