the
young life is sheltered and fed during long months in the mother's body,
and that the father had a share in that life. Is it not amazing that in
this twentieth century we find many girls twelve years old and over who do
not know that their father had any share in starting their lives? I knew
of a girl nineteen years old, a student in college, who did not know that
a man had any essential part in bringing children into the world, but
supposed, when any question of illegitimate childbirth was raised, that
possibly God punished a bad woman by sending her a baby before she was
married. It is little short of criminal that many girls are allowed to
reach adolescence with no sex thought or image clearly in their minds
except such as they have received directly or indirectly from animals. If
boys and girls knew from the beginning that a part of the father's life
and a part of the mother's life united to form the beginning of their
lives, the question of sex would begin on a plane where there were
religious, moral, and spiritual associations, and an atmosphere of love
and holiness. These young people could then see the facts of sex clearly
instead of through the mists of prurient fancy and suggestion as they see
them now.[60] The boy and girl who know these two tremendous facts of the
nurturing care of the mother before birth, and the cooperation of the
father and mother in the beginning of life, are fortified against the
principal moral and spiritual dangers that they are to face in the future.

The next information and guidance needed by our boys and girls concerns
the influence of sex upon their own development. The objection is
continually raised that it is not well for little children to have sex
thoughts emphasized in their minds. But at present no boy or girl grows up
and plays among other children, or hears talk on the streets, or goes to
work in factory or store, without hearing these facts emphasized day by
day, emphasized unhealthily and distorted shamefully. We propose simply to
have the emphasis shifted and lightened for it will be lightened if the
facts are given truly and in right relations. Boys and girls should learn,
at the same time they are learning facts of nutrition, excretion,
respiration, and circulation of the blood, those facts regarding sex which
are most important for healthy growth of mind and body. They should know
that the organs of reproduction have a definite relation to the natural
and health