“My mama told me it would happen”: menarche and menstruation experiences across generations

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

“…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].…”

“…Participants who had reached menarche in the early-mid 20 th C often indicated that they had not known what menstruation was at the time of their menarche [8, 38, 42, 56, 60, 65, 69, 72, 81, 87, 89, 93-97, 102, 109, 110, 116, 119, 120, 135]; in most cases this lack of knowledge led to distress when first bleeding was discovered. In the early 20 th C, adolescent participants were often instructed not to swim in cold water or wet their hair because they were incorrectly advised that it was physically dangerous to do so during menstrual bleeding [45,60,63,65,71,81,95].…”

“…Several participants indicated resource limitations related to sourcing menstrual materials [8-10, 37, 40, 48, 56, 81, 98, 106, 114, 117, 119, 120, 126, 143] or having access to an adequate place to regularly change menstrual materials, clean themselves during menstruation, or dispose of menstrual materials [10,25,26,28,47,51,54,78,80,81,88,94,106,108,111,115,117,120,122,126,132,138]. Resource limitations were most prominent for participants receiving low incomes or who were part of marginalised, lower-socioeconomic groups [9,10,37,48,62,65,126,132], sometimes also experiencing homelessness [9,10,37,126,132]. These sub-populations have often not been included in qualitative studies of menstrual experiences in HICs, with the earliest study to purposefully recruit low income participants being published in 2007 [62], and those experiencing homelessness in 2017 [9].…”

“…There were often individuals who chose not, or were not allowed, to participate in certain activities. Those who reached menarche in the early to mid-20 th C were often banned from taking part in activities that were considered 'cold' (e.g., bathing or sitting on cold surfaces) because it was considered dangerous to their health [41,45,50,56,63,65,71,81,84,94,95,108]. Some individuals were not allowed to participate in religious practices whilst menstruating (within this review examples were given from those practicing Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam) [8,60,63,67,86,92,120], and some religions prohibited menstrual sex [67,86,105].…”

“…Some individuals were not allowed to participate in religious practices whilst menstruating (within this review examples were given from those practicing Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam) [8,60,63,67,86,92,120], and some religions prohibited menstrual sex [67,86,105]. Where adolescent participants missed education during menstruation it was normally due to pain [8,32,34,49,56,58,61,64,65,71,80,87,99,103,122,127,129]. Many participants did not engage socially during menstruation [34,36,40,41,48,58,61,71,72,80,81,87,92,94,95,99,112,119,122,129,…”