YOU CAN BE FRANK, INTELLIGENT AND HUMAN WITH YOUR CHILDREN. Let me tell
you, if I may, some things you can do. Let us think of the daughter
first, but not because she needs more protection than the son, for God
knows they are both in need of all the protection loving, intelligent
parents can give them.
If the streets are sloppy and you want to protect your daughter, what
do you advise her? To wear her rubbers, of course. If she has a cold
and there is a raw wind blowing what do you advise her? Wrap up well
and see that her throat is protected. Why do you give this advice?
Because on the sloppy streets the feet are the points of attack, and in
the raw wind the throat is the point of attack.
Why not be just as sane in dealing with your daughter when you come to
teach her to protect her character and self respect?
At what points do these outflooding impulses of glorious womanhood
manifest themselves at the surface of the body? The answer is
self-evident, the lips and the bosom. You have known this all the time
and you have sat idly by and seen your daughters go out into dangers
far more deadly than wet feet or inflamed throat without ever saying a
word to them about how to protect themselves. Why not sit down by your
daughter of fourteen and tell her these truths; tell her there is a
vital connection between the bosom and the sex nerve center which is
more sensitive than the most delicate electric impulse and explain to
her how wonderfully God has arranged the body of woman and why? Why
not tell her the same truth as to her lips? _Tell her that unless God
had made a vital connection between the lips of a woman and the sex
nerve center she could not kiss love and nobleness into the life of her
children during those glorious days of motherhood._ Tell her, with all
the love a mother can put into the words, that will live forever in the
heart of every true child, that because of these wonderful truths every
_true young woman should protect her lips and bosom as she would the
engagement ring, the pledge of love and approaching marriage_. Tell
her, with the wifely love upflooding from your heart, why her father
has a right to kiss and embrace you and _why it will mean the lowering
of her character, if not its ultimate loss, for her to give these
jewels of hers, even for a moment, into the hands of any man other than
he who will be her husband, and as such has the loving right to them_.
Why not teach your son the sacredness of womanhood and the manliness
of protecting it? Pardon me, if I say I am not writing a theory, but
am speaking out of my own heart. I commenced teaching my own son
when he was twelve years old and had my last talk with him a month
before he was married. He grew up to be a clean young man and I felt
a thousand times repaid for my effort when his wife came to her new
mother a short time after their marriage and told her with such delight
how thoughtful, kind, gentle and refined her lover was in all their
relations.