Many of the lectures printed in this volume have formed the basis of a
series given at Teachers College, Columbia University, during the
summer sessions of 1914 and 1915, and during the academic year
1914-1915. Others were addressed to parents, to groups of men, to
women's clubs, and to conferences on sex-education. In order to avoid
extensive repetition, there has been some combination and rearrangement
of lectures that originally were addressed to groups of people with
widely different outlooks on the sexual problems.
Several years ago the late Dr. Prince A. Morrow announced that a volume
dealing with many of the timely topics of sex-education was to be
prepared by the undersigned with the advice and criticism of a
committee of the American Federation for Sex-Hygiene; but even before
Dr. Morrow's death it became evident that this plan was impracticable.
Three members (Morrow, Balliet, Bigelow) of the original committee
collaborated in a report presented at the XV International Congress on
Hygiene and Demography. Since that time the writer, working
independently, has found it desirable to reorganize completely the
original outline announced by Dr. Morrow.
In accordance with a declaration made voluntarily in a conversation
with Dr. Morrow, the author considers himself pledged to devote all
royalties from this book to the movement for sex-education.
Among the many persons to whom is due acknowledgment of helpfulness in
the preparation of this book, the author is especially indebted for
suggestions to the late Dr. Prince A. Morrow, to Dr. William F. Snow,
Secretary of the American Social Hygiene Association, and to Dr. Edward
L. Keyes, Jr., President of the Society of Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis; for constructive criticism, to his colleagues, Professor
Jean Broadhurst and Miss Caroline E. Stackpole, of Teachers College,
who have read carefully both the original lectures and the completed
manuscript; and to Olive Crosby Whitin (Mrs. Frederick H. Whitin),
executive secretary of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis,
who has suggested and criticized helpfully both as a reader of the
manuscript and as an auditor of many of the lectures delivered at
Teachers College.