ginning in childhood, as many a
mother of cruel children knows to her sorrow. In adolescence, when
sex-differentiation is much more marked, the dominating impulse is
stronger in the boy and the yielding impulse in the girl; but in
little children the differentiation has not yet begun.

=Gang and Chum.= At about four or five years the child leaves the
infantile stage of development, with its self-love and its intense
devotion to parents and their substitutes. He begins to be especially
interested in playmates of his own sex, to care more for the opinions
of the gang--or if it be a little girl, of the chum--than for those of
the parents. The life-force is leading him on to the next step in his
education, freeing him little by little from a too-hampering
attachment to his family. This does not mean that he does not love
his father and mother. It means only that some of his love is being
turned toward the rest of the world, that he may be an independent,
socially useful man.

This period between infancy and puberty is known as the latency
period. All interest in sex disappears, repressed by the spontaneously
developing sense of shame and modesty and by the impact of education
and social disapproval. The child forgets that he was ever curious on
sex-matters and lets his curiosity turn into other, more acceptable
channels.

=The Mating-Time.= We are familiar with the changes that take place at
puberty. We laugh at the girl who, throwing off her tom-boy ways,
suddenly wants her skirts let down and her hair done up. We laugh at
the boy who suddenly leaves off being a rowdy, and turns into a
would-be dandy. We scold because this same boy and girl who have
always been so "sweet and tractable" become, almost overnight, surly
and cantankerous, restive under authority and impatient of family
restraint. We should neither laugh nor scold, if we understood. Nature
is succeeding in her purpose. She has led the young life on from self
to parents, from parents to gang or chum, and now she is trying to
lead it away from all its earlier attachments, to set it free for its
final adventure in loving. The process is painful, so painful that it
sometimes fails of accomplishment. In any case, the strain is
tremendous, needing all the wisdom and understanding which the family
has to offer. It is no easy task for any person to free himself from
the sense of dependence and protection, and the shielding love that
have always been his; to weigh a