the sole subject of discussion, the opinion in favor of early teaching by the mother prevailed.  “It is the mother who must, in the first place, be made responsible for the child’s clear understanding of sexual things, so often lacking,” said Frau Krukenberg ("Die Aufgabe der Mutter,” Sexualpaedagogik, p. 13), while Max Enderlin, a teacher, said on the same occasion ("Die Sexuelle Frage in die Volksschule,” id., p. 35):  “It is the mother who has to give the child his first explanations, for it is to his mother that he first naturally comes with his questions.”  In England, Canon Lyttelton, who is distinguished among the heads of public schools not least by his clear and admirable statements on these questions, states (Mothers and Sons, p. 99) that the mother’s part in the sexual enlightenment and sexual guardianship of her son is of paramount importance, and should begin at the earliest years.  J.H.  Badley, another schoolmaster ("The Sex Difficulty,” Broad Views, June, 1904), also states that the mother’s part comes first.  Northcote (Christianity and Sex Problems, p. 25) believes that the duty of the parents is primary in this matter, the family doctor and the schoolmaster coming in at a later stage.  In America, Dr. Mary Wood Allen, who occupies a prominent and influential position in women’s social movements, urges (in Child-Confidence Rewarded, and other pamphlets) that a mother should begin to tell her child these things as soon as he begins to ask questions, the age of four not being too young, and explains how this may be done, giving examples of its happy results in promoting a sweet confidence between the child and his mother.

If, as a few believe should be the case, the first initiation is delayed to the tenth year or even later, there is the difficulty that it is no longer so easy to talk simply and naturally about such things; the mother is beginning to feel too shy to speak for the first time about these difficult subjects to a son or a daughter who is nearly as big as herself.  She feels that she can only do it awkwardly and ineffectively, and she probably decides not to do it at all.  Thus an atmosphere of mystery is created with all the embarrassing and perverting influences which mystery encourages.

There can be no doubt that, more especially in highly intelligent children with vague and unspecialized yet insistent sexual impulses, the artificial mystery with which sex is too often clothed not only accentuates the natural curiosity but also tends to favor the morbid intensity and even prurience of the sexual impulse.  This has long been recognized.  Dr. Beddoes wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century:  “It is in vain that we dissemble to ourselves the eagerness with which children of either sex seek to satisfy themselves concerning the conformation of the other.  No degree of reserve in the heads of families, no contrivances, no care to put books of one description