Chapter 10

The same principle of imitativeness would, of course, apply to other ideals. This explains to us why the recurrence of certain ideals or modes of life in successive generations of a family leads to the supposition that there are "hereditary" elements at work. It is also a good reason why we should guard against the contaminating influence of unworthy ideals. It is impossible for us to carry about imitation virtues and fool our children into imitating them.

Children begin to form their ideals early in life, and their first standards are derived from the people and the things about them that contribute to their pleasures--sweets and parents and the heroes of the fairy tales.

As the child's experience broadens he borrows ideals from new acquaintances and the characters he meets in his reading.

The child absorbs from his surroundings, from his acquaintances, and from his reading, as well as from the instruction that he receives in school or in church, materials for building a world of what _ought_ to be. And in this world he himself plays a very important role. We must therefore make sure that the materials for ideals which are within our control shall be of the best.

Loose conversation, cynicism, open disrespect for the noble things in human character, lack of faith in human nature cannot be exhibited to the child day after day without having their sinister effect. It is true that some children, here and there, will resist these unfavorable influences, and will come out of the struggle strong and self-reliant, with faith in their own ideals and with faith in mankind. But we cannot afford to treat the developing character of the child on the theory that it needs exercise and temptation as a gymnast needs exercise and trying tasks. The temptation that becomes a habitual stimulus to wrong doing or wrong thinking has no moral value. The child is only too ready to follow the path of least resistance, and the temptations will come aplenty after the ideals begin to form.

High ideals in the home, and not merely good words; loyalty to ideals and a spirit of confidence in the children, are needed to give the children that confidence in themselves which they need to make them loyal to their own ideals when these are out of harmony with vulgar fashion.

XII.

THE STORK OR THE TRUTH

"Mother, where do babies come from?"

Some day you will be asked this question by your little girl or your little boy--if you have not already been asked. What will your answer be?

Even if you have been accustomed to giving frank answers to your children's questions about all sorts of subjects, you are likely to hesitate when it comes to this. You will be tempted to say what you were probably told yourself, under similar circumstances. You will perhaps say that the doctor brings babies in his satchel, or that the stork brings babies in his bill. Or perhaps you will feel impelled to tell Harry to go out and play, and ask you again a few years later when he will be old enough to understand.

The telling of a myth like the stork story is harmless enough for the time being. We have entertained Santa Claus for ages without undermining the morals of our children. And we shall continue to retell the fairy stories, for, although they are not, strictly speaking, "true" stories, they have their place in the life of the child. Why can we not go on, then, as we have done in the past, leaning upon the stork?

The difference between the story of where babies come from and the story of Santa Claus or Mother Hubbard is a very important one. Santa Claus and Mother Hubbard represent ideas and interests that are but passing phases in the child's development, whereas knowledge about reproduction is something that grows in interest with the years and reaches its deepest significance just at the time when you can hardly, if at all, regain your hold upon your child, once you have lost it. It does not matter much who disillusions your child about Santa Claus. The disappointment is brief, and soon the child can look upon the legend as a joke. But it does matter very much who tells your child that the stork story is all a lie, and _how_ he is told.

It is well for mothers to realize that the embarrassment which they may feel when this question is first asked is quite foreign to the child, for the child at this time has no knowledge whatever of sex. To him it is simply a question for satisfying his momentary curiosity. Later on, when the child has become aware of the idea of sex, he is not likely to ask his mother embarrassing questions, or, if he should ask them, the situation would be equally embarrassing to both--unless you have in the meanwhile kept in close sympathy with your children, and they feel that they can come to you with any question and be answered frankly. And the way to keep them in close sympathy is by meeting frankly every question as it arises. It is not necessary to answer every question by telling everything you know; it is necessary merely to tell enough to satisfy the child's immediate need. Not only, then, does your frank answer tend to keep the child in touch with the mother, but you protect him in this manner against going for his information to sources that are frequently contaminating. The information that boys and girls give one another about sex matters is often something appalling, not only in its distance from the truth, but in the amount of filth with which it is encrusted. It is the desire to keep his mind clean, then, that should prompt the mother to tell her child what he wants to know when he wants to know it. A third consideration is found in the fact that many children, when they do not receive satisfactory answers to their queries, will reflect and brood about the subject to a degree that becomes morbid. This is especially likely to happen where the subject of the child's inquiry is treated as though it were an improper or a wicked one to speak about, so that the child dares not ask others for enlightenment.

That the early answering of the child's questions may offset both morbid curiosity and the danger of resorting to filthy sources of information is illustrated by the story of a seven-year-old boy who was invited by an older boy to come to the wood-shed for the purpose of being told an important secret. "If you promise not to tell any one," the older boy began, "I will tell you where babies come from." "Why, I know where babies come from," replied the second, not greatly interested. "Oh, yes you do! I suppose you think that a stork brings them? Well, you're 'way off there. The stork ain't got nothing to do with it," the instructor continued breathlessly, for fear of being deprived of his opportunity to impart his precious secret. At last the secret was out; but the younger replied, coolly, "That's nothing. My mother told me that when I was four years old." Since the matter had ceased to be a secret, and since the story even lacked novelty, all opportunity for the elaboration of details was destroyed.

But what can you tell to a child of four or five? For that is the age at which the question is likely first to present itself. Remember that the child is not asking a sex question, but one about the direct source of himself, or about some particular baby that he has seen. You can say that the baby grew from a tiny egg, which is in a little chamber that grows as the baby grows, until the baby is big enough to come out. This will satisfy most children for a considerable time, but some children will immediately ask, "Where is that little room?" To which you may reply, "The growing baby must be kept in the most protected place possible, so it is kept under the mother's heart." Or, you may say that the baby grew from a seed implanted in the mother's body, that it was nourished by her blood until it grew large enough, when it came out at the cost of much suffering. Of course, you will tell the story as personally as you can, about your particular child, and in as simple a way as you can.

If you tell the little girl or boy this much you have told him all that he probably cares to know at this time; you have told the truth so that you have nothing to fear about his being disillusioned either as to the story or as to your own trustworthiness; and you have avoided arousing the suspicion that certain subjects are unworthy of understanding. And then you will find that this new conception of his relation to you, as truly a part of your being, will deepen and strengthen his natural feeling of affection and sympathy. It is also well with the first telling to impress the child--in so many words, if necessary--with the idea that he must always come to you for anything he wants to know, and that you are always glad to tell him.

As the child grows older his knowledge of life must grow also. In the country and in small towns the child becomes familiar with many important facts about life without any special effort being required to inform him. He learns that chickies hatch out of eggs and that the eggs have been laid by the mother hen. He learns that the field and garden plants grow from seeds and that the seeds were borne by the mother plants. He learns about the coming of the calf and the colt; and even city children can learn that kittens and puppies come from mother animals. It is a comparatively simple matter for a child with such knowledge to get the further information that the baby brother developed from an egg that mother kept near her heart during the hatching time. Much of this knowledge that the country child acquires incidentally must be brought to the city child through special efforts and devices, in the school as well as in the home, that he may acquire the fundamental facts of bearing and rearing young, in plants as well as in animals, and that he may look upon these facts not as strange or disconcerting marvels, but as natural happenings.

Miss Garrett, one of the most successful teachers of sex and reproduction, tells the story of some city boys who had been taught these things, and who had decided, in their club, to raise rabbits. The selection of a father rabbit and a mother rabbit was too important a matter to leave to a committee, so the whole club went in a body to attend to these preliminaries. The care the boys took of the mother rabbit during her pregnancy was in itself an education. Later Miss Garrett saw the leader of the club--who had been the "toughest" of the gang--with another boy on the street, while a pregnant woman was trying to cross with a heavy basket. "Come on, Jim," he called, "let's help her across." This same boy but a few months back would have ridiculed the poor woman in her plight.

Every child can learn what Jim and his companion learned. He can learn to respect motherhood and to be considerate of mothers as mothers. It is very interesting to see the great differences in this regard between families in which the fact of motherhood is a secret, and those in which it is a matter of common knowledge. I was visiting a friend whose six-year-old boy knew that another baby was expected, and he was very careful to avoid annoying his mother. Of course, the attitude of the other members of the family also had an influence upon the conduct of this child. But another mother complained that she received very little consideration during pregnancy from her oldest son--a boy of fourteen--although all the other members of the family were as careful and as thoughtful as could be desired. This second mother, however, had allowed her older boys to grow up on the assumption that sex and reproduction had nothing to do with life, or, at any rate, were of no concern to them and were not suitable subjects to know about; so that her boys did _not_ know that something unusual was in the air, or that something special was expected of them.

The important thing for the mother to do during these growing years is to retain the confidence of the children, and to give them an opportunity to become acquainted with the everyday facts about plants and animals. The questions that come to the child's mind will be questions of motherhood and babyhood, chiefly, and not questions of sex or fatherhood. When these questions do at last arise, as they are sure to almost any time after twelve years, and sometimes even before, you have a great advantage if your child brings his questions to you instead of to his casual acquaintances of the school or street, even if you are not prepared to answer all the questions for him. The girl will come to her mother, and the boy will come to his father, if they have acquired the habit of coming with frankness and confidence. Then, if for any reason you are not qualified to tell what needs to be told, you may just as frankly say so and refer the child to the right instructor, who may be a teacher or the family physician. Older children may even be sent to suitable books. But the most desirable condition is that in which the parents have prepared in advance to answer all the questions themselves, and even to anticipate some questions.

The child should receive instruction along these lines at various stages in his development, even up to young manhood or womanhood, corresponding to his physical development and to his mental development, which normally proceed in close relation to each other. The girl should be informed how to care for her health. The boy should be instructed about the sex life of the opposite sex to know what they have a right to expect, or rather what they have no right to demand of the other. Boys during the adolescent period, which has been called the "age of chivalry and romance," are keen to appreciate the rights of others and their own duties to the weak; it is at this time that we are to appeal to their sense of honor in establishing ideals of purity, and the sense of responsibility as bearers of the life stream. The standards of sex morals are established during this period, for girls as well as for boys. Their strength to time of temptation will lie in the ideals which now become fixed. We want our girls to grow up demanding purity of the young men they will meet, not pretending that they do not know the difference. And we want our boys to grow up with faith in the literal truth of that fine line about Sir Galahad:

His strength is as the strength of ten, because his heart is pure.

The parents who wish to prepare themselves with a knowledge of what to tell their children in place of the old stork fable; of when to tell, instead of postponing to a dishonest "some other time"; and of _how_ to tell, instead of in the embarrassing, half-expressed vagueness, would do well to read some of the abundant literature on this subject that has been issued in recent years just for our help: Some of the best titles are given below.

The following titles, with comments, are taken for the most part from "A Selected List of Books for Parents," issued by the Federation for Child Study:

BIOLOGY OF SEX. By T. W. Galloway. A concise and reliable statement of fundamental sex facts.

GIRL AND WOMAN. By Caroline Latimer. Very helpful in understanding and dealing with the physical, mental and moral disturbances of girlhood and early womanhood. Some of the recommendations, particularly regarding physical aspects, are open to question.

MARRIAGE AND THE SEX PROBLEM. By F. W. Foerster. Emphasis is laid upon the religious and spiritual sides of the emotional life, upon training for self-control and the mastery of moods and instincts.

SEX. By Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thompson. The biological aspects of sex and also interesting chapters on sex education, the ethics of sex, and sex and society. Good bibliography.

SEX EDUCATION. By Maurice A. Bigelow. Covers the problems of sex education and of criticisms of sex education.

SEX EDUCATION. By Ira S. Wile, M.D. An excellent little volume for the purpose of assisting parents to banish the difficulties and to suggest a plan for developing a course in sex education. The chapter on terminology is most helpful.

THE SEXUAL LIFE OF A CHILD. By Dr. Albert Moll. An exhaustive study of the origin and development in childhood and youth, of the acts and feelings due to sex. Indispensable to anyone interested in sex education.

THE SEXUAL QUESTION. By August Forel, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D. Translated from the German by C. F. MARSHALL, M.D., F.R.C.S. A comprehensive and reliable study of the subject from biological, historical, social and hygienic viewpoints.

TRAINING OF THE YOUNG IN LAWS OF SEX. By the Hon. E. Lyttelton. A brief presentation, from a lofty point of view of the many phases of the sex problem as it confronts the boy.

The following books on sex education were written for children. They are listed here, not to be put into the hands of the young, but as a help to parents in supplying methods of approach and a usable vocabulary:

THE RENEWAL OF LIFE. By Margaret W. Morley.

THE SEX SIDE OF LIFE. An Explanation for Young People. By Dr. Mary Ware Dennett (Pamphlet, published by the author, New York.)

THE SPARK OF LIFE. By Margaret W. Morley.

THE THREE GIFTS OF LIFE. By Nellie M. Smith, A.M.

Special studies in many parts of the country, especially during the war, have made it clear that girls in the adolescent stage are definitely aware of the need for clean and trustworthy instruction on matters pertaining to the relations between the sexes, to the control of the emotions, to the care of the body during the menstrual period, and to other problems arising from the facts of sex.

It is pathetic, is it not, to have a high-school girl write: "Some parents are ashamed to tell their girls everything, so that is why I think they should be told in school." Whose parents had she in mind?

Another writes: "There are many girls with no mother or very near female relation that can tell them all they need to know, and if anything should happen in a girl's life, she does not think it proper to speak to a male, even if it is her father." Are the girls who have mothers or "very near female relations" to be none the better, or happier for it?

I hope that mothers will not continue in the future, as most have done in the past, to hesitate about giving such information to their children. If you are perhaps tempted to feel that you would like to preserve the child's innocence as long as possible, you have but to realize that innocence is not the same as ignorance. We are apt to forget how young we ourselves were when we had obtained one way or another a large mass of information about reproduction, and even about sex. The question is not whether a young child should have this information or not; the question is whether he shall have correct and pure information, or false and filthy information. For one or the other he is sure to get. True knowledge is the best mantle of innocence.

Much misery is caused, not only for girls, but also for boys, by the lapses from the path of virtue. If the young man who has gone astray is in a position to say, "Had I but heeded!" instead of saying, "Had I but known!" it will make a great difference in the way he will later feel toward the one person from whom he had a right to expect protecting knowledge. It is true enough that knowledge alone is not a sure protection against wrong-doing; but you can have no moral training without knowledge, and knowledge is the least you can give.

There is no reason why parents should think of enlightening their children on this subject as a disagreeable necessity, instead of as one of the important means through which to be of real help to their children, and at the same time to help themselves to retain their hold upon the children.

XIII.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRANSITION

There comes a time in the life of every boy and every girl that brings a maximum of trials and worry--to the other people. This time is the golden age of transition from childhood to manhood or womanhood, the age of adolescence. If you have had annoyance and hardship with your infants, if the children have perplexed you and tried you--as you thought, to the limit--you may be sure that there is more in store for you. For the age of adolescence brings with it problems and perplexities and annoyances that will make you forget that it's any trouble at all to look after younger children.

After years of painstaking attention to all the details of a child's home surroundings, in the hope that this attention will result in distinct gains to the child's character, it must be very discouraging to notice some fine day that Louise is becoming rather finicky about the food--which is just as good as she has always had--and that Arthur is inclined to become rather short in speaking to his mother--not to say impudent. And both are likely to become critical not only about the food but about a hundred other things that they find at home. And both are likely to be something not far from impudent in giving expression to their criticisms. In fact, they will be quite prepared to undertake the education of their parents, and to tell you with alarming assurance just how and when to do things, both at home and abroad. Fortunate, indeed, are the parents who have come to this critical stage in their education equipped with a sense of humor.

However, these unexpected and mortifying outbreaks of inconsiderateness and bad manners do _not_ show that your early efforts have all been in vain. They do _not_ show that outside influences beyond your control have perverted your children, or have counteracted your efforts. They show merely that Louise and Arthur are still growing, and have now entered upon that most interesting and most significant period of the new birth.

It is well, first of all, for the mother--and the father, too--to realize that this period is a passing one, for this knowledge can save you many a worried day and many a sleepless night. I do not mean that when the child comes to this dangerous age you are simply to let nature and impulse have their way. I mean only that the problems are to be met with many devices, but not with worry. For we are coming to understand some of the fundamental causes of the great changes that occur in the nature of the growing child at this time, and we are learning, accordingly, better ways of dealing with the troublesome manifestations of these changes. Not that we can lay down rules for the proper handling of all adolescents everywhere, for we can not. Every individual is a problem by himself; but we can learn a better way of approaching this precious problem, a more helpful attitude to maintain toward him or her.

There is a physical basis for the remarkable alterations in the minds and morals of this age. The infant grows very rapidly at first, but with a diminishing rate until about the twelfth year. Then, almost suddenly, the rate of growth increases again, and in four or five years most children have attained nearly their full physical growth. Associated with this great physical growth is the fact that some organs grow much faster than others, so that the proportions of an adult come to be very different from those of a child. In the meanwhile, however, there has been a great strain on the system, because, apart from the demands of the general body growth, some of the organs have not been able to keep up with the special demands made upon them. For example, the growth in body weight and in muscle may proceed more rapidly than the proportionate growth of the lungs or the liver, or the weight may increase more rapidly than the proportionate strength of the muscles. Moreover, the nervous system is developing at a more rapid rate, probably, than the other systems of organs, and this strain shows itself in various ways that are disagreeable to adults with fixed habits and standards.