already been made by the setting up of the
Inter-Departmental Committee referred to earlier in this report. We
strongly recommend the Government to give very favourable consideration
to this particular proposal, and we hope that ways and means will be
found of giving effect to it. We think that this suggestion is of
fundamental importance in any approach to the problem, and we consider
it should be given consideration by the Government.

_Instruction for Parents_: In the long run the responsibility for
a child's general well-being rests upon the parents. Some can, and do,
take every care to discharge that responsibility. Others either fail or
neglect to do so. In some cases this failure comes from a lack of the
necessary knowledge or from inability to impart it. In one memorandum
addressed to the Committee there appear the following paragraphs:

"I think it highly probable that much delinquency is due to the
fact that parents simply do not know how to teach their children on
a subject that many parents regard as secret between parents. I
think it highly unlikely that a parent will consult an adviser
(say, a doctor) as to how the child should be trained, and I am not
so sure that a doctor would know what advice to tender even if he
was consulted.

"Instruction of parents seems to be the job of a specialist. The
doctors have prepared several booklets on sex instruction.

"I am wondering if good attendance could be secured for a series of
lectures by specialists to parents, either to both sexes or to
mothers alone. A mother would probably be more likely to attend a
meeting as one of an audience rather than to suffer the
embarrassment of a personal consultation with, say, a doctor to
whom she has to admit that she does not know how to discharge her
duty to her children.

"It is generally agreed that much of the cause of child delinquency
is due to unsatisfactory home influence and parental control and
example, but the fact that many of the offenders come from good
homes and fine parents is strong evidence, I feel, that there is
some important deficiency even in those good homes, and it may well
be that that deficiency lies in the fact that the parents do not
really know how to give their children the knowledge that they
should have in the way they should receive it. I am confident that
we have people who could help in t