it not a matter of some wonder that we have
never really made any systematic effort to instruct the boy concerning
his wonderful power? Very few fathers give their sons any guidance along
this line, although they do so quite freely on every other subject. Of
course, it is a sacred, delicate subject from which we naturally shrink,
but it is overmodesty to allow a lad to fall into the abuse of his
manhood, either alone or in twos, when a wise word, spoken in time,
would save the smirch on two lives or more. In fact, we are beginning
really to understand that it is just as imperative for us to teach a boy
how to live his life with the utmost happiness as to show him how to
procure the wherewithal to feed his body. For this reason it is being
advocated today that the boy should be given explicit instruction as to
the care of the organs of reproduction and detailed information as to
the functions of these organs, and many are doing this.

Our boys today are eating freely of "the knowledge of good and evil,"
and they are not as innocent as we could wish them to be. They are not
ignorant of the processes of life because we have said nothing
concerning them, but their knowledge is partial and faulty and clouded
with misinformation.

A few years ago a body of men were discussing this very thing in New
York City, and one of them suggested that every one present write on a
piece of paper the age at which he had his first sex knowledge and pass
it to the head of the table. The average age named by this group of
interested men was six and a half years. Not one of these men, either,
had ever had a single word spoken to him on this all-important subject
by any adult. Their knowledge was of the street. Is it any wonder, then,
that boys stray, mar their own lives, betray confidences and innocence
and become moral lepers, feeding like parasites on the fairest of our
communities?

Instruction in the processes of the function of reproduction would help
many a boy to a clean participation in and a happy understanding of the
home. The divorce evil and the necessity of a large number of surgical
operations among women, to say nothing of the so-called social evil,
would be greatly lessened by such instruction. The father, of course, is
the proper person to deal with this question.

=Parents and the Sex Problem=

When parents understand sex influence they will more than half meet the
problems of the teen age. To rightly instruct along s