Actress Allison Janney has sparked a fresh debate about sex education and fertility awareness after revealing in a 2025 interview that she didn’t understand her own fertility window until she was in her 40s. The conversation, conducted by Monica Lewinsky, resurfaced on X this week and drew a wave of reactions from women who said they shared Janney’s experience.
“I was … under the impression that women could have kids until they were 50,” Janney said, per The Federalist, which first reported on the exchange. The actress also expressed frustration with American sex education, saying, “They didn’t teach us anything about our bodies growing up.”
Janney, now in her 60s, and Lewinsky, in her 50s, both reported feeling uneducated about the limits and strengths of the female reproductive system—a reality The Federalist argues is not a failure of modern sex ed but a direct consequence of feminist ideology that has dominated American culture and education for decades.
The Feminist Roots of Sex Education Gaps
According to The Federalist’s analysis, the problem is not misogyny, as Lewinsky suggested in the interview, but rather the feminists themselves. The article traces the shift back to the 1960s and the rise of the sexual revolution, which told women to abandon chastity and embrace sex as a form of personal liberation. This, the piece argues, tore sex and childbearing away from the sanctity of marriage and devalued both.
Soon after, feminists began worshiping work, influenced by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and sex education shifted its focus to preventing pregnancy so women could be “empowered” by licentiousness and participation in the workforce. In 1964, the then-medical director of Planned Parenthood created the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which The Federalist says used sex ed to push a radical feminist view of sex as morally neutral.
By the 1980s, radical feminists had embraced abortion as a way to counter the “oppressive” consequence of sex: children. The Federalist notes a research paper that found a 13 percent decrease in teen pregnancies after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, but argues this came at the cost of teaching young women about their fertility and the natural consequences of sexual activity.
The Modern Push for ‘Girlboss’ Culture
Since the 1990s, The Federalist argues, institutional leftists have pushed contraceptives as part of a cultural movement telling young women to embrace being a “girlboss” first and a wife or mother second. Popular 2000s movies spread the idea that women can have both a high-powered career and a fulfilling family life, but The Federalist calls this a myth, saying humans are not made to work the full-time job of motherhood and corporate work simultaneously.
The article also points to corporate America’s role in perpetuating this lie. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, large companies like BlackRock, Disney, and Macy’s began subsidizing employee abortions instead of encouraging maternity leave. The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd is quoted as saying, “A lot of these companies believe childless women are more productive and better for their profitability than mothers would be.” The piece notes that half of all Fortune 100 companies now champion abortion for their employees.
Consequences for Women Like Janney
Janney’s interview with Lewinsky also touched on her regrets. The Federalist reports that Janney laments not having children sooner, and instead pours her love into her dogs. “My true love in my world besides my friends and family are dogs,” she said. “Animals, and especially dogs … are my heart. I could not love dogs more.”
For many women, Janney’s story resonates deeply. A tweet highlighted by The Federalist reads: “I know people might mock her, but this is so real. A lot of women I know didn’t know much about their own fertility windows. Honest conversations don’t happen with young women and that’s a mistake.”
The debate raises pressing questions about what American sex education teaches—and what it leaves out. While modern curricula often emphasize contraception and disease prevention, critics like The Federalist argue they fail to inform young women about the biological realities of fertility and the potential consequences of delaying childbearing.
As birth rates continue to decline—a trend The Federalist links directly to the feminist movement—the piece suggests that feminism’s promise of liberation has actually left women uninformed and, like Janney, facing regret. The article calls for a return to honesty about fertility, family, and the natural design of the female body.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/14/feminism-is-why-actress-allison-janney-was-never-taught-about-fertility/