The simple fact is that a girl is not ready for love-making until she falls in love with a specific individual. For this to happen in a meaningful manner, she must first pass through the daydream stage of adolescence. Boys do not go through this phase and, indeed, do not have to. They are ready for intercourse at a much younger age than girls are. Girls have much to risk in love, even if we confine our observations to the purely biological aspects of the experience of sexual intercourse. Psychologically they must, so to speak, be sure that it is indeed Prince Charming who leans over them. Until it is, they must dream and sleep, for if it is a rude stranger he can shatter the dream forever, thus rob the young girl of any chance of ever bringing her dream to fulfillment in reality. Another danger of both puberty and adolescence is that the parents will be overly strict, interpreting the move of the young one toward independence as a danger to her. I have seen many cases of young girls who might have stayed within the home until their adolescence was safely over had it not been for the rather prurient and thick-skinned assumption of a mother or father, or both, that their early dating must inevitably be immoral. This assumption on the part of a parent can activate a very hostile reaction on the part of a young girl. It is as if the parent were saying to her, “You will never be independent of us, never have a life of your own. Why don’t you give up trying?” The fact that the parents do not intend their watchfulness to imply this at all is not relevant. That’s the way the young one too often interprets it, and in a gesture of defiance she may do something that will really injure her. Equally seriously affected, if not more so, is the young girl who _feels_ extremely rebellious but who submits to overzealous parental authority out of fear. I have seen several girls with this problem. What generally happens is that they have pulled back, because of undue parental influences, from indulging the personality-enrichening dreams of adolescence. This causes them to remain on the threshold of womanhood, lost in an emotional dependency which belongs to an earlier phase of development. By and large, the problems of such girls when they come to womanhood tend to be more severe than those of the girls who rebelled. In making these observations on parental strictness I am in no way advocating a laissez-faire attitude. Every young girl needs to feel the force of the parents’ moral feelings; they give her guidance and a feeling of security. She will, however, generally react more normally and healthfully if the moral attitudes are expressed and interpreted rather than laid down as ukases. * * * * *