The greatest duty of mankind lies
in the proper uprearing of our children. The
fact is recognized, but is the duty fulfilled?
Do we rear our children as we should? There is
but one answer: We fail. Teaching them many
things for their good, we yet keep from them ignorantly,
foolishly, with a hesitancy and neglect unpardonable knowledge,
the possession of which is essential for their future
welfare.
The first necessity for well-being
is a healthy mind in a healthy body. We can give
our children that, if we will, by teaching them all
about the body, its source of life, its different functions,
and its care. The child should grow to maturity
knowing that the human body is something fine, something
that accomplishes good, something to be proud of in
every way. Above all should the child be taught
all concerning the process of reproduction, just as
it is taught the action of the stomach or of the brain.
By so doing, we can produce a better and healthier
and happier generation to follow ours. By what
strange and mistaken impulse in the past such absolutely
required teaching has been so studiously withheld
is beyond all comprehension.
We want the best for our children.
We want them to grow up with right thoughts and habits,
yet we keep from them the knowledge without which
their thoughts and habits will surely be imperiled
when there arises in them the generative instinct,
which has its effect upon both male and female youth
alike.
We give them no information as to
sexual matters; and, when it comes to them, it is
too often but in the way of half-truths, mysterious,
exciting to the imagination, and dangerous.
Yet how simple and natural the giving
of this information might be made; and how easily
the child might be safeguarded! Mankind has demands
which must be gratified. We have hunger; we have
thirst; we have the impulse of reproduction.
Each is right and natural. There should be no
difference in the consideration of either of these
wants. All about them the child should be taught,
from the beginning, so that all will be natural and
right and commonplace and a matter of course long
before the age is reached when the sexual instinct
is developed.
Is not this reason? Is it not
healthful, logical, common sense? Is it not the
wholesome and right and proper view?
Nature is devoted to reproduction.
From the cell to the flower, and so on upward, the
creatures of the world are but renewing themselves,
and the learning of this is the greatest and most
beautiful of all studies. All this the child
can be taught.
Elementary biology, or the study of
subjects of what we call zoology and botany combined,
can be made the most attractive of studies to any
child who has learned to read. The boy or girl
may be taught that the trees and flowers are living
things that are beautiful and are male and female.
The child may be shown how the bees carry the pollen
from flower to flower, and how other plants and flowers
are produced in that way.
He can be taught the wonder of seed,
and its consequences. He can be shown the birds
in their mating, and the marvel of the egg, and why
it can produce a chicken. And thus the child,
boy or girl, may be led on, through the gradations,
to a study of the human body, and how reproduction
is provided for there as in the bodies of all other
living things, vegetable or animal.
Before the child, boy or girl, has
reached the age of ten, long before the sex instinct
has been aroused, the sexual lesson will have been
learned innocently and thoroughly and, when the change
comes, it will be as no bewildering, exciting thing,
but something anticipated, and received with a sense
of understanding and responsibility.
This knowledge almost unknowingly
acquired as a child, will mean health of mind and
of body, and the avoidance of what may result most
evilly.
How is sexual instruction given now?
In tens of thousands of instances no doubt
in the majority not at all. Lectures
to youth of either sex are given sometimes, but only
when they have reached what is called “the age
of understanding.”
Here is where parents err, and seriously.
The teaching has been deferred too long. The
young of either sex, long before puberty, have acquired
some knowledge of the mystery which should
have been no mystery at all and late teaching,
however sound and wise, but gives an added and inviting
direction to the subject suddenly made to assume a
new and startling importance. It arouses curiosity,
and more. It may sometimes be harmful.
As for the youth never taught at all,
those who acquire their knowledge only through accidental
sources usually incapable, and too often
vicious their case could not be worse.
They are unprepared for one of the tests and demands
for life. Their parents are guilty.
There is nothing impure in nature.
To guard the children, to prepare them for every phase
of life, is the parents’ duty. The child
is pure, and to the child all things are pure.
Teach the child, simply as a matter of course, all
about the ways of reproduction, and to the boy or
girl purity will remain when the age of sexual sway
and impulse comes. This is the only law in the
case. Let it be followed, and the generation
to follow will be clearer, wiser, and healthier than
is the present one.
It is my hope that this “Every
Girl’s Book” (with “Every Boy’s
Book” which preceded it) will afford the means
so long needed and desired for teaching children what
they should be taught. I have tried to tell the
story of sex naturally, in a clear and simple way,
from the development of life, and of life’s
relations, from protoplasm all through organic life
up to mankind. Its teachings should result in
wide promotion of the innocence of knowledge which
is better, infinitely, than the imperiling innocence
of ignorance.
George
F. Butler, M. D.
Chicago, Ill.
July 1, 1912.