the opposite sex, but if the child be normal, a noticeably larger part finds its way in that direction.  Observing parents can often see unmistakable signs of jealousy:  toward the parent of the same sex, or the brother or sister of the same sex.  The little boy who sleeps with his mother while his father is away, or who on these occasions gets all the attention and all the petting he craves, is naturally eager to perpetuate this state of affairs.  Many a small boy has been heard to say that he wished his father would go away and stay all the time,—­to the horror of the parents who do not understand.  All this is natural enough, but it is not to be encouraged.  The pattern of the father or the mother must not be stamped too deep in the impressionable child-mind.  Too little love and sympathy are bad, leading to repression and a morbid turning in of the love-force; but too much petting, too many caresses are just as bad.  Sentimental self-indulgence on the part of the parents has been repeatedly proved to be the cause of many a later illness for the child.  As the right kind of family love and comradeship, the kind that leads to freedom and self-dependence, is among the highest forces in life, so the wrong kind is among the worst.  Parents and their substitutes—­nurses, sisters, and brothers—­are but temporary stopping-places for the growing love, stepping-stones to later attachments which are biologically more necessary.  The small boy who lets himself be coddled and petted too long by his adoring relatives, who does not shake off their caresses and run away to the other boys, is doomed to failure, and, as we shall later see, probably to illness.[12]

[Footnote 12:  One of the best discussions of this theme is found in the chapter “The Only or Favorite Child,” by A.A.  Brill, in Psychoanalysis.]

In the later infantile period, the child, besides wanting to exhibit his own body, shows marked interest in looking at the bodies of others, and marked curiosity on sex-questions in general.  He particularly wants to know “where babies come from.”  If his questions are unfortunately met by embarrassment or laughing evasion, or by obvious lying about the stork or the doctor or the angels, his curiosity is only whetted, and he comes to the very natural conclusion that all matters of sex are sinful, disgusting, and indecent, and to be investigated only on the sly.  This conception cannot be brought into harmony with the unconscious mental processes arising from his race-instincts nor with his instinctive sense that “whatever is is right.”  The resulting conflict in some four-year-old children is surprisingly intense.  Astonished indeed would many parents be if they knew what was going on inside the heads of their “innocent” little children; not “bad” things, but pathetic things which a little candor would have avoided.