Sex instruction; Women social reformers -- United States -- Biography
To the writer the answer is simple. The mother is the logical person to
teach the child as soon as questions arise, for it is to the mother that
the child goes for information before he enters the schoolroom. If,
therefore, the mother answers his questions truthfully and simply and
satisfies his curiosity, she will find that the subject of sex ceases to
be an isolated subject, and becomes a natural part of the child's
general learning. A woman does not need to be a college graduate, with a
special degree in the study of botany, before she can tell her child the
beautiful truth of its birth. But she does need to clear her own mind of
prudishness, and to understand that the procreative act is natural,
clean and healthful; that all nature is beautified through it, and
consequently that it is devoid of offensiveness.
If the mother can impress the child with the beauty and wonder and
sacredness of the sex functions, she has taught it the first lesson, and
the teacher can elaborate on these teachings as the child advances in
school. All schools should teach anatomy of the sex organs and their
physiology, instead of teaching the human body in the neuter gender as
has been done up to this time.
The whole object of teaching the child about reproduction through
evolution is to clear its mind of any shame or mystery concerning its
birth and to impress it with the beauty and naturalness of procreation,
in order to prepare it for the knowledge of puberty and marriage.
There must of necessity be special information for the pubescent boy and
girl, for having arrived at the stage in their mental development they
no longer take for granted what has been told them by the parents, but
are keen to form their own ideas and gather information independently.
It is right, therefore, to give them the facts as science has found
them.
There are workers and philanthropists who say there is too much stress
put upon the subject of venereal diseases; that the young girl after
learning or hearing of the dangers she is likely to encounter in the
sexual relation, is afraid to marry and consequently lives a life
unloved and alone.
“Your treatment of this subject is dangerous,” said a very earnest
social worker a few weeks ago. “Such knowledge will prevent our young
girls from marrying.”
To which I replied that my object in telling young girls the truth is
for the definite purpose of preventing them from entering into sexual
relations whether in marriage or out of it, without thinking and
knowing. Better a thousand times to live alone and unloved than to be
tied to a man who has robbed her of health or of the joy of motherhood,
or welcoming the pains of motherhood, live in anxiety lest her sickly
offspring be taken out of her life, or grow up a chronic invalid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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