Menstruation Experiences of Middle and High School Students in the Midwest: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The purpose of this pilot study was to expand understanding of the experience of menstruation for girls in the United States and its impact in the school setting. A qualitative approach was used to gather data from focus group interviews. Descriptive content analysis was used to categorize the range and types of menstruation experiences described by 12 participants aged 12–16 years. Findings revealed four main themes: (1) learning about menstruation, (2) experiencing menstruation, (3) managing menstruation, and (4) social norms and meaning of menstruation. Participants described multiple challenges faced learning about and experiencing menstruation, especially in the school setting. Participants described the limited understanding of menstruation experiences and confusion about the use of menstrual hygiene products. Challenges experienced at school included not having adequate access to menstrual hygiene products, limited time for changing products, fear of leaking menstrual blood, and impacts on school attendance. School nurses are well-positioned to contribute to creating school environments that are supportive of menstruation.

Experiences of menstruation in high income countries: A systematic review, qualitative evidence synthesis and comparison to low- and middle-income countries

“…143,56]. In general, emotionally supportive mothers were appreciated by participants [32,34,38,43,47,60,61,64,79,81,96,106,114,127,135,144] and emotionally unsupportive mothers criticised [8,32,38,49,56,63,64,70,81,96,106,107,109,110,119,128]. Several participants specifically stated that they had received neither positive nor negative support; their mother dealt with menarche matter-of-factly and it was rarely mentioned afterwards.…”

“…menstruation [32,38,56,63,65,70,95,104,106,109,110,119]. Several studies included participants stating that they appreciated the social support they received during adolescence from other family members, particularly grandmothers, sisters and aunts [65,71,99,106,110,119,121,122,127,135,144], and sometimes brothers and fathers [32,43,54,61,71]. A few participants stated that they had received inadequate support from their fathers [32,56,61,95,121].…”

“…242, 117] as they were easy to conceal and allowed them to partake in activities which they could not previously [49,50,56,81,106,117]. Where participants reached menarche in the mid-20 th C onwards there was concern around the risk of toxic shock syndrome when using tampons, sometimes leading to a reluctance to try them [36,56,69,80,81,127].…”

“…Menstruation also often made participants feel disgusting or unclean [28, 33, 38, 47, 54-56, 58, 60, 64, 68, 73, 74, 81, 86, 87, 92-94, 96-99, 110, 111, 117, 119, 121, 135, 136, 143]. Negative emotional responses, particularly shame and worry, often led to increased mental burden [25, 34, 38, 46, 47, 51, 53, 55, 64, 77, 81, 88, 109, 112, 117-120, 122, 128, 132, 138, 143] and sometimes non-participation where the negative emotional responses were linked to concerns about respondents' own ability to conceal their menstrual status [48,49,55,71,93,94,119,127,135,141].…”

“…In the early to mid-20 th C this was often due to external behavioural expectations (or outright sanctions imposed by mothers) that they would not participate [36, 41, 45, 50, 56, 63, 65, 71, 93-95, 106, 108, 116] or a lack of appropriate menstrual materials for the particular activity, for example where tampons for swimming were not yet available, the participant chose not to use them, or the participant was not allowed to use them [32,38,56,95,109,112]. In recent decades abstention from physical activity was more commonly due to study participants choosing not to engage due to physical menstrual symptoms [34,40,51,77,80,87,99,127]. There were also participants who did partake in physical PLOS ONE activity during menstruation but worried that during this participation their menstrual status would be revealed [8,27,38,49,54,56,81,106,108].…”