A few years ago a body of men were discussing this very thing in New York City, and one of them suggested that every one present write on a piece of paper the age at which he had his first sex knowledge and pass it to the head of the table.  The average age named by this group of interested men was six and a half years.  Not one of these men, either, had ever had a single word spoken to him on this all-important subject by any adult.  Their knowledge was of the street.  Is it any wonder, then, that boys stray, mar their own lives, betray confidences and innocence and become moral lepers, feeding like parasites on the fairest of our communities?

Instruction in the processes of the function of reproduction would help many a boy to a clean participation in and a happy understanding of the home.  The divorce evil and the necessity of a large number of surgical operations among women, to say nothing of the so-called social evil, would be greatly lessened by such instruction.  The father, of course, is the proper person to deal with this question.

=Parents and the Sex Problem=

When parents understand sex influence they will more than half meet the problems of the teen age.  To rightly instruct along sex lines and so prepare boys and girls to meet the teen period is almost completely to meet the teen problem.

Social and economic changes have moved this generation a full hundred years ahead of our fathers.  The change, however, has a moral menace in it, for the slow but sure ways of the old-fashioned home with its genuinely moral atmosphere have nearly slipped us.  Today boys and girls are herded together by the compulsion of the times and moral ideas are in danger of being warped and twisted.  Everything about us today is more complex than formerly, and the more complex things become the more we herd together.  Mass life is common and growing—­in education, in the schools and in play life, in the big public playgrounds.  Religious activity, in spite of the group tendency toward the small group, is still in the mass—­Christian Endeavor, Sunday school groupings, etc.  With the growing assumption of week-day activities on the part of the church, the moral peril increases.

To offset this increasing social danger sex instruction is an insistent necessity.  Boys and girls must be taught to see themselves as members of society with all that that implies.  To do so means a knowledge of self and sex and their functions and responsibilities.  The sources and processes of life must be intelligently understood and thus respected.  Ignorance of life does not beget purity, respect and honor.  A boy’s regard for a girl cannot proceed from lack of knowledge, although this lack may be termed innocence.  A girl’s love for the best for self and others is impossible unless she has knowledge tinged with the awe of God’s purposes.  Too often have our boys and girls been merely innocent, such innocence causing their fall.  The tree of knowledge sometimes demands a high price for its fruit.  To safeguard lives unblighted, the purity and processes of life’s mystery must be imparted through instruction to our growing youth.