Youth and Sex: Dangers and Safeguards for Girls and Boys — John Shaqi
Youth and Sex: Dangers and Safeguards for Girls and BoysScharlieb, Mary
Science
Youth and Sex: Dangers and Safeguards for Girls and Boys
Scharlieb, Mary
Adolescence; Child psychology; Moral conditions; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics; Youth
Speaking specially with regard to girls, let us first remember that
the highest earthly ideal for a woman is that she should be a good
wife and a good mother. It is not necessary to say this in direct
words to every small girl, but she ought to be so educated, so guided,
as to instinctively realise that wifehood and motherhood is the flower
and perfection of her being. This is the hope and ideal that should
sanctify her lessons and sweeten the right and proper discipline of
life. All learning, all handicraft, and all artistic training should
take their place as a preparation to this end. Each generation that
comes on to the stage of life is the product of that which preceded
it. It is the flower of the present national life and the seed of that
which is to come. We ought to recognise that all educational aims and
methods are really subordinate to this great end; if this were
properly realised by adolescents it would be of the greatest service
and help in their training. The deep primal instinct of fatherhood and
motherhood would help them more than anything else to seek earnestly
and successfully for the highest attainable degree of perfection of
their own bodies, their own minds, and their own souls. It is,
however, impossible to aim at an ideal that is unseen and even
unknown, and although the primal instinct exists in us all, its
fruition is greatly hindered by the way in which it is steadily
ignored, and by the fact that any proclamation of its existence is
considered indiscreet and even indelicate. How are children to develop
a holy reverence for their own bodies unless they know of their
wonderful destiny? If they do not recognise that at least in one
respect God has confided to them in some measure His own creative
function, how can they jealously guard against all that would injure
their bodies and spoil their hopes for the exercise of this function?
There is, even at the present time, a division of opinion as to when
and in what manner children are to be made aware of their august
destiny. We are indeed only now beginning to realise that ignorance is
not necessarily innocence, and that knowledge of these matters may be
sanctified and blessed. It is, however, certain that the conspiracy of
silence which lasted so many years has brought forth nothing but evil.
If a girl remains ignorant of physiological facts, the shock of the
eternal realities of life that come to her on marriage is always
pernicious and sometimes disastrous. If, on the other hand, such
knowledge is obtained from servants and depraved playfellows, her
purity of mind must be smirched and injured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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