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most significant facts of life. It is usually an easy matter to protect
children against smallpox and typhoid and some other diseases, but no
parent or educator has yet found out how we may be sure to keep real
live children ignorant of sex knowledge. They seem to absorb such
forbidden facts as naturally and as freely as the air they breathe.
Ask any large group of representative men--ministers, or doctors, or
teachers, or men of business, or the world's toilers--whether any of
them knew the essential facts of sexual life before they were twelve
years of age, and ninety-seven in every hundred will answer quickly in
the affirmative. Ask any large group of women, excepting those whose
girlhood has been guarded with exceptional care, and the overwhelming
majority will acknowledge that they knew the essential facts before
they were fifteen years old. Once more, ask these same men and women
whether their early knowledge of sex came from pure and reliable
sources or from vulgar playmates and depraved servants; and with rare
exceptions it is found that vulgarity made the strongest impression in
the first lessons concerning the great facts of life. Such being the
truth, it is nonsense for parents to sit in complacency because they
feel sure that their children are safely protected against any vulgar
first lessons concerning sex; for no one can know that children are
safely guarded from others who may corrupt their innocent minds. As an
illustration, a few years ago the mothers of a group of little girls in
one of the best-managed private schools felt that with careful
supervision both in school and home there was no danger of forbidden
knowledge reaching the children. But one day a new pupil innocently
exhibited to her mother a miniature notebook with unprintable notes on
sexual topics. The resulting investigation revealed a secret club
organized by the pupils for the purpose of passing to each member
through notebooks all newly acquired information, which had a peculiar
value because it must be kept secret from teachers and parents. That
club had been in existence during two school years. This is only a
sample case of many which have proved that if children are allowed the
freedom that developing individuality demands, their mothers must not
feel too sure that their darlings are protected against knowledge of
life, and perhaps of life in its most degraded aspects.

[Sidenote: The vital question for parents.]

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