action on which you can work together enthusiastically. The projects and
purposes of a husband and wife often conflict even when their desires
and motives are in harmony. Very well, go back of the purposes to the
underlying desires, and build new projects and purposes on which you can
unite. Suppose that one of you wants to go to the movie down on the
corner and the other just hates the idea. Very well; that is a conflict.
But if you search open-mindedly, you will probably find some underlying
agreement. Perhaps, though you disagree about this particular movie, you
both are craving to see _some_ good movie; and if you look up the
advertisements, you can find one that will delight you both. Or perhaps
the essential desires of each will be fulfilled best if you stay home
tonight to catch up on your sleep, and then go to a movie tomorrow
night. Or perhaps one of you dislikes the idea of any movie at all, but
both of you want to go out for the evening; then doubtless you can find
some other entertainment that will satisfy both.
Somewhere, back of the surface disagreement, lies a deeper agreement if
you will seek it patiently and lovingly. And this applies not only to a
little dispute over movies, but to all the greater controversies that
husband and wife confront. Where shall we move? How shall we get along
on the family income? What religious training shall we give the
children? Shall Mary be permitted to have that Jones boy come to the
house? No matter how perplexing the disagreement may be, there is a best
possible solution for all concerned if we will seek it understandingly
and in the spirit of love.
_8. Surrender nonessentials._ Many a marriage has gone to smash because
husband or wife or both clung as a matter of principle to a point which
could easily have been given up and forgotten if both had centered on
the great underlying essentials. Do not acquiesce ignobly on vital
matters. But do not wreck your own happiness and that of your mate over
some comparatively minor issue that was never worth the tears and the
agony which it caused.
_9. Agree to live and let live._ Cultivate freedom for your mate, your
children, and all the people involved in your family problems. To be
oneself is one of the most precious rights of a human being. We need it
for the fulfillment of our own life. Our loved ones need that same
freedom for the fulfillment of their lives. Now, freedom is not defiance
of law, but voluntary fulfillment of law. The better we understand each
other and the laws of life, the more likely we are to find that freedom
which brings the fullness of joy. By one of those strange paradoxes, we
never fully win the love of our dear ones until we cease demanding it.
_10. Put the welfare of your family first_, and stop fretting about
yourself. Although this rule comes last in our list, it really comes
first in the search for fulfillment of personality in family life. What
do you really want from your mate and your children? Are you after
comfort, security, affection for yourself? Or do you want, above all
things, that these loved comrades of yours shall find the road to the
abundant life--shall experience richly and grow fully, until they find
their true places in the master pattern of our world adventure?
Answer that question honestly. Live up to your real decision. And if
with all your heart you seek the joy of these others, your love will be
met with the high tide of love, and even out of anguish you will win
your way into the meaning and the glory of existence.
_Frances Bruce Strain_
CHAPTER NINE
_Sex Instruction in the Home_
A young woman who has won a place for herself as an artist tells the
story of her first nude drawing. She was of scarcely more than
kindergarten age when, one day before supper, her fancy produced a
sketch of her ten-year-old brother in nature's own attire. Pleased with
the result, she took it to the supper table and gave it to him--"A
picture I made of you."
Brother looked, glanced swiftly at Mother, and started to pocket the
sketch. Mother said, mother-fashion, "Let me see it," and then, after
seeing, also started to slip the picture out of sight. Father held out
his hand. "Let's have a look." Around the table the drawing passed from
hand to hand. No one praised, no one spoke, no one smiled. When one of
the younger children started to say something, he was abruptly told to
eat his supper. Heavy hung the weight of unexplained guilt over the
five-year-old artist. After the meal her mother took her quietly aside
and said, "When you draw a picture of a boy, you don't have to draw
everything!"
"It was years," the artist confessed, "before I could draw, comfortably,
a male nude."
Many of the young men and women among our readers, who are concerned
with love and marriage, have undoubtedly become aware of inner handicaps
of their own--handicaps of thought and feeling which they recognize as
their heritage from a generation of other-mindedness in regard to
matters of sex. There were silences that caused wonderings, punishments
that were not understood, prohibitions which built up timidities, over a
long zigzag trail of unrest and fear through childhood up to maturity.
We hear young people say because of their own experience, "I'll see to
it that my children don't go through what I went through." And they _do_
see to it. Mothers of school-age children, of kindergarten and
nursery-age children, mothers of babies, even mothers in their first
pregnancies, come with their questions in order that they may _start
right_.
At what age do you begin explaining life to children?
How much do you tell?
How much do you explain their own growing-up changes?
How do you keep them from talking to others?
Does telling lead to trying out things with each other?
My little girl doesn't ask questions--how make her healthily curious?
My little boy has a bad habit--how deal with it?
These are representative questions, and they strike deep into the heart
of education as we see it today, for sex education is no longer merely a
matter of biological instruction. Knowledge of human reproduction is an
essential in every instance, of course. It is the basic science back of
the whole sexual life. But just as the physical aspects of marriage are
for men and women today subordinate to the psychic and intellectual
aspects, so in a sex-education program, especially one in the home,
biological information is far from being the element of greatest
importance. More significant is the guidance and nurture of the
emotional life of your children--their emotional natures as a whole, and
especially those aspects of their emotional natures which have their
roots in the sexual impulse. Frustrations of childhood, failures, hurts,
jealousies, misinterpretations of childish love affairs, play episodes
for which society has such swift punishment, clandestine sex
knowledge--these are the experiences which leave their blight on the
later love responses. Life as a whole with its conventions and social
codes does not present an open highway to the goal of sexual maturity.
But forward-looking parents can, by granting knowledge, understanding,
and a sympathetic interpretation of the various phenomena of the sexual
life, prevent many of the hazards of the past and provide a better
assurance of happiness for their children.
Because the biological aspects of sex teaching are concrete, something
one can lay hold of in a tangible way, we shall consider them first.
There is no set age to begin sex education. There is no set place to
stop. There is a time to begin, and that time is indicated by any
expressed interest on the part of your young son or daughter--a
question, a comment, an observation, a wish. The time to stop is when
his interest stops. Don't run on ahead of him. Usually interest is
stimulated by some incident in the neighborhood or at school--a tank of
young guppies, a nest of baby mice in someone's cellar, a new baby home
from the hospital, a word in the newspaper. With many very young
children, concern about their own origin seems to arise spontaneously.
"Where did I come from, Mother?" It is a natural question, yet it has a
certain mystical quality, coming as it does from within and reaching
back into the unknown.
The greatest number of questions arise between the ages of four and six.
After school entrance, questions recede gradually until by the ninth,
tenth, or eleventh year children have reached what is called the
questionless age. This is not an indifferent age--quite the
opposite--but spontaneous questions are less frequent. Possibly they are
crowded out by other interests, possibly bits of desultory information
satisfy for the moment; and there is always the gradual adoption of
reticence which takes place as children grow older.
At adolescence there is a keen revival of interest but more resistance
to open family discussion than in the pre-adolescent age. Maturing
children are touchy, sensitive, self-conscious, modest, seclusive. They
run to cover at too intimate a topic, especially in the hands of adults
who are inclined to strike a wrong note; to be preachy and teachy and
inquisitive and, in terms of the young adolescents themselves, "too darn
sexy!"
No matter what the age, whether pre-school, elementary school, or high
school, if questions are asked or interest is shown, explanations are
given in accordance with the age, understanding, and general background
of the child.
The questions that children ask are as the sands of the sea, yet sifted
and analyzed, they reveal a fairly uniform structure on which one may
build. It is a foursquare structure of pregnancy, birth, fertilization,
and mating, in the order named. They start with a concrete
situation--"Where did Mrs. Holmes get her baby?"--and the three others
follow in logical sequence. Of course, the pattern varies somewhat.
Well, where did Mrs. Holmes get her baby? You know and I know, yet the
thought of getting it all said to this young cherub in a brown snowsuit
makes us a bit fluttery. We didn't think that it would. "Oh, the baby.
All babies grow inside their mothers." How unbelievably simple! No birds
or bees or butterflies, or seeds planted under mothers' hearts. Just
"all babies grow inside their mothers." Six words.
Of course you may touch up the story. You will not want to leave it so
stark and bare. "They grow in a little place just made for them to grow
in. It's in here, the place is, in mothers," and you give a friendly pat
against your side. Many children ask where the place is, and many think
it is the stomach. Other children have said so. "The place is called the
uterus, u-t-e-r-u-s, and is a little sac that stretches as the baby
grows." You don't _have_ to say all this. Whether you do or not depends
upon your child. Some children, the younger ones, may let you off with a
word. Others must have more detail. It's all an individual matter.
Anyway, you keep on answering as long as the questions come, and _no
longer_. (Sometimes enthusiasm runs away with us.)
We need not be surprised, once the matter of pregnancy is established,
to be confronted with a swift second question, "How does the baby get
out of the mother?" Sure enough, how does he? About five years ago I put
this question to a class of high-school-senior girls and requested
written answers. "They are born"; "they leave the mother through an
opening"; "they come from the mother in some way"--these were the best
answers. Most of the others read, "I'm uncertain about it"; "it's very
hazy in my mind"; "I wish you would explain exactly"; "I've always
wondered"; and so on.
An explanation of the process of birth is the second foundation square
of the whole structure. Pregnancy is the first. One depends upon the
other, so we say: "In every mother there is a passage that leads from
the place where the baby is growing. When the baby is ready to live by
himself as a separate little person, he is brought down the passage and
out through an opening into the world. This coming into the world is
called being born. Another word for the same thing is 'birth.' Your
birthday is your being-born day."
Many mothers like to adopt a bit of drama that can be done with the
hands and arms to illustrate their verbal explanations. The pantomime
makes the story simpler and helps relieve self-consciousness. "Suppose
the baby grows in here," you say, cupping your hands together with the
wrists straight and parallel. "Between my wrists is the passageway
leading to the outside. When the baby is ready to be born, the
passageway widens and lets the baby through. It's a good deal like
swallowing, only the other way around. Your food slips down a passage
into your stomach, _out_ of sight. The baby slips down a passage _into_
sight!" There is your story of birth in a nutshell.
Little boys and girls, too, are often troubled at the thought of birth.
It seems an impossible feat. So you explain the contraction of the
muscles, the size of a newborn baby--"about as big as your Molly Lou
doll"--the position of the baby--"all folded up like a little
Jack-in-the-box." Most conscientiously you leave an impression of the
naturalness of the birth process. Not for worlds would you create any
feeling of distress or anxiety. Neither do you, as the mother, seek to
appropriate all the laurels. The children do not owe you love and
obedience because of "what you went through for them," and "that is the
reason I love you so" leaves father a bit out in the cold. No, birth
should not be presented as a sacrifice or an ordeal, but as a
fulfillment, a joyous fulfillment which mother and father together
share.
The two remaining foundation squares, fertilization and mating, take
more courage to answer. They strike so closely into the heart of
existing relationships. You are fearful, too, that the knowledge will be
misused, that it will lead to sex play and experimentation. You don't
know how to phrase the answer anyway. There are some things you just
can't put into words!
Let's see if one can't, and much more simply than you imagine. Your
Philip, or Philippa, who has just learned that babies grow in their
mothers, says: "I wonder what makes the babies start. How do they get in
their mothers in the first place?"
"Babies are not babies from the very start," you answer. "They have to
grow before they are born just as you grow now after you are born. Each
baby starts at first from the union of two tiny particles of living
matter called cells. One cell is in the father, one is in the mother.
These two particles must come together and unite away up in the mother
where the baby is to grow. When they do, then the baby begins to take
form."
Now for the next step, mating. No, it's not so difficult at all if you
have not neglected to build up a foundation for it as you went along.
For an understanding of the act of mating, the children must first be
familiar with the differences in body structure--that boys have an outer
organ, and the girls have a long, slender inner passage. Knowledge of
the first they acquired in the come-and-go of daily home association; of
the second, when they learned how a baby was born. In a discussion of
mating, it takes usually just the merest reference to these structural
differences for children to see immediately the mechanics of mating.
"Yes, these two parts fit closely together so that the father cells
(sperm cells) are able to pass over to the mother and up to the place
where the baby is to grow."
To many this will seem a very cold, stark, and inadequate presentation
of a deeply psychic experience. In these first explanations of human
reproduction, pregnancy, birth, fertilization, and mating, I believe it
would be out of place to try to bring about any considerable awareness
of either the sensuous or the emotional involvements in the act of
procreation. That knowledge comes later. But the feeling which all our
first teaching conveys is important. It is especially important in
relation to the three major experiences, pregnancy, birth, and mating,
about which so much resistance has centered in the past. Our teaching
should carry with it a natural acquiescence to Nature's own plan, rather
than any outward expression of our own mental philosophy toward it. Most
children, given a knowledge of the basic facts of reproduction, usually
grant them a ready and happy acceptance.
Those parents who met their children's questions and other expressions
of interest as they arose, and also those who were not able to, seek, as
junior-high-school days approach, the assurance that their children are
ready for that wider experience. "I don't know how much she knows--she
doesn't say anything, and she doesn't want me to." Certainly the last
thing one does is to probe or question. If you have reason to feel that
something must be done, you may go about it in several ways:
1. You may take the initiative by introducing into family conversation
some topic of current interest which will promote questions--incubator
babies, the Dionne quintuplets, child marriages, the recent
thirteen-year-old father.
2. Pets are marvelous biological laboratories--white mice, rabbits,
puppies, snakes, turtles. Of course there must be mates and matings.
3. Well-chosen books, not only sex-education books, but simple biologies
and Nature books as well, open up thought and discussion.
4. Visits to the zoological gardens, to natural-history museums and art
galleries, are valuable teaching experiences.
If the subject is not marred by too much realism or sentiment or
moralizing, older children will respond with interest to a discussion of
human reproduction. Even when a child is approachable, if your own
emotional balance is insecure, it is, perhaps, well to work out these
objective and tangible activities with the children, as with a fellow
student. The joint interest is a way of achieving in the end greater
poise for yourself.
Before we leave the subject of the biological aspects of sex teaching, a
word concerning preparation for maturing. In general, experience shows
that explanations of the outward phenomena which mark the onset of
adolescence--menstruation and seminal emissions--should be made to both
boys and girls long before they are likely to occur--at ten, surely, or
even earlier if questions arise. Many children become acquainted with
them through older children at school and receive not too pleasant
impressions. In pre-adolescence the whole matter can be presented so
that it is accepted objectively and impersonally. With both boys and
girls there is often a feeling of prideful expectancy, and some day you
may expect to hear a joyful announcement, "Mother, oh, Mother--it's
come!"
At this point I should like nothing better than to leave our teaching to
do its own good work for the children. But in the minds of parents there
is an ever recurring anxiety--the use to which the children will put
this new knowledge. Ideas are not, we know, soporific. They tend to
translate themselves into action. Will the children talk? And won't they
start experimenting? The matter of "talking outside" is rapidly taking
care of itself through the general adoption of sex-education teaching by
most young parents. Nobody runs around telling what everyone knows. It
has become a commonplace. Occasionally one may caution young school-age
children not to say much to the other children, but if they do in their
enthusiasm or in a casual moment, no great harm is done. Certainly one
does not punish for it.
Children who are overweighted either with too much sex knowledge or with
fears and cautions are usually the neighborhood offenders. One father
recently told me that he didn't dare give his son the usual terms for
his reproductive organs because he would go straight out and shout them
from the housetops. As a matter of fact, that was just what the boy was
doing with the substitute terms. Realizing that a wooden gun is as good
as a real one when it frightens everybody, the child used his substitute
terms to shock his father and the world at large. In reality, there
_are_ no substitute terms. Everyone knows them for what they are, and in
addition as confessions of weak courage.
Modern sex teaching is filling the great need of other days in its
adoption of correct terms for the functions of the body and its organs
as they apply to elimination and reproduction. It is an informal sort of
thing which comes along like a little companion of the more important
topics. Strange that so much that is visible should go nameless, while
hidden things like heart and stomach and lungs should be known! A young
five-year-old who adored his pretty nursery-school teacher took constant
note of the beauties of her person. Her eyes were so blue and her hair
was so wavy and her throat was so smooth, and when she bent over, "you
could see her _lungs!_"
In all this provision for your children's understanding, one thing we
counsel against. It is the choice of another person--friend, nurse,
minister, doctor--to take your place, unless that person has had special
sex-education training and possesses those personal qualifications
which fit him for the task. A scientific background is not enough. In
the near future we shall have college-trained leaders, not only trained
but college-sanctioned and selected. Until that time there is no lay
person so well qualified to teach children as their own intelligent
fathers and mothers. They are able to establish a valued inner and
progressive bond of confidence when their teaching has been happily and
wisely carried out. After all, in this age of transition when so much is
counted good that once was counted bad, and so much counted bad that was
once good, it doesn't matter much what our words are so long as they
convey reassurance, dependability, and a sense of the rightness of
living _with_ rather than _against_ the best of Nature's plans.
Does sex instruction tend to start misconduct--suggest to children that
they undress each other, play "father and mother," and does it impel to
too free speech and behavior? No, on the contrary, sex teaching, wisely
carried on, has proved itself to be the best of preventives. It has a
stabilizing influence and leaves the minds of the children free to turn
to other interests. My experience shows a high correlation between sex
misconduct and lack of adequate sex instruction.
Usually in childhood, sexual misconduct is not sexual at all in origin.
It has any number of causes and any number of guises. Most frequent of
the causes are: seeking to know, emotional stress, lack of a good time,
sex activity in others, premature sex experience.
Children who do not live in a cloud of mystery, whose mental horizon has
been cleared by simple explanations of observable facts--the differences
in physical structure of boys and girls, for example--are not likely to
be the aggressors or even onlookers in any neighborhood undressing
episode. It holds nothing for them.
On the other hand, a child may have a very clear idea of sex
differences, may have dressed and undressed freely with sister or
brother, and still be active in undressing episodes as an emotional
outlet. One such boy was mother-bound. He had been brought up a
goody-goody. In order to demonstrate that he was no sissy but a
thorough-going he-man of eleven, he headed a gang of girl tormentors.
Sex misconduct as recreation, as something to do, has a long record. In
a dull and dispirited world, girls and boys find the thrill of adventure
in games, clubs, and play of all kinds, with sex in its most unsavory
form as the central theme. A little nine-year-old who had been a
frequent offender was asked what in all the world she would like most to
do. Promptly she answered, "Go roller-skating." "Which would you rather
do, go roller-skating or play 'father and mother?'" With shining eyes
she answered, "Oh, go roller-skating!" There was no doubt of this
child's sincerity, no doubt of the drab, pinched quality of her meager
opportunity for childish fun.