From our fear of sex, we have become the victims of sex. What can save us? It is women—the mothers who hold the future in their keeping. The answer rests with them. Liberation from the manifold problems of our disordered sexual life depends largely on a right transmission of knowledge to our children, so that they without harm may become wise. Such teaching must be given first by the mother. In this way only, through a trained and wiser motherhood, making possible the unhampered unfoldment of the children of the future, can humanity come into its heritage. This is my firm conviction, my profound belief. And for this reason, in my book on Motherhood, I have placed the question of sexual education last, because I hold it to be the most important of all—the foundation necessary before other changes or reforms can be of any avail. There is much that gives me hope. This question of the sexual education of her children has begun to stir in the conscious thought of countless mothers. The days of folded hands are happily over. Mothers of all classes desire knowledge for their children because they want to save them from suffering and from falling into the mistakes that they, through want of knowing, have themselves made.[100] While, however, mothers, as well as the great mass of educationalists and reformers, recognise more and more the need for this knowledge for all children, they are yet uncertain as to how and when sex teaching should be given.[101] There is too much hesitating so that often cowardice prevents any action being taken. And the question, “What shall we teach our children and at what age ought we first to speak?” is one to which few have as yet found a certain answer. The truth is, the vast majority of mothers and teachers are themselves amazingly and perilously ignorant on the whole subject of sex. The ban of silence has worked untold evil in our thoughts, and what makes the difficulty even worse is that we are so very much afraid of sex it is impossible for us to learn. Hence we go about seeking mysteries and hunting lies, and completely lose sight of what should be as clear as daylight—the need of the little child. The twin curses of our civilisation that fetter the spirit, prudery and prurience, acting together, have drawn sex into the darkest, unwholesomest corners of our minds, so that few of us mention the subject even to our own children without a feeling of shame. So pitifully afraid are we of the facts of life that we invent fables and lie to them as to how they were born.