The boy needs friendship.  Not all his needs can be met by the schoolboys whom he may bring into his room, nor can they all be met by his mother’s affection.  He needs a father.  The most serious obstacle to the religious education of boys is that most of them are half-orphans; intellectually and spiritually they have no fathers.  The American ideal seems to be that the man shall be the money-maker, the woman the social organizer, and the children shall be committed to hired shepherds or left to shift for themselves.

Sec. 3.  THE FATHER AND THE BOY

No one else can be quite the teacher for the boy that his father ought to be.  No man can ever commit to another, still less to some tract or book, the duty of guiding his boy to sanity and consecration in the matter of the sex problems.

The first word that needs to be said on this subject is that such problems receive safe and sufficient guidance only in the atmosphere of affection and reverence.  Do not attempt to teach this boy of yours as though you were dealing with a class in physiology.  The largest thing you can do for him is to quicken a reverence for the body and for the functions of life.  By your own attitude, by your own expressions and opinions, lead him to a hatred and abhorrence of the base, filthy, and bestial, to a healthy fear and detestation of all that despoils and degrades manhood, and to a reverence for purity, beauty, and life.[41]

Be prepared to give him, on the basis of reverence, the clean, clear facts.  Be sure you have the facts.  Do not think he is ignorant; he is in a world seething with conversation, stories, pictures, and experiences of evil.  The trouble is that his facts are partial, distorted, and unbalanced by positive errors; his knowledge is gained from the street and the school-yard.  Only a personal teacher can help him unravel the good from the bad, the true from the false.  Do not trust to your own general knowledge; take time to read one of the simple and sane books on this subject.[42] Be ready to lead him aright.  Remember this subject has provoked a large number of books, many of which are foolish and others unwholesome.  Do not try to deputize your duty to some doubtful book.

Sec. 4.  FATHERING THE BOY

But the boy needs more than instruction on a special subject; he needs personality, he needs the time and thought of, and personal contact with, his father.  Men who do not live with boys never know what they lose.  And alas, see what the boy misses!  He has been his mother’s boy up to school age when school takes him and gives him a woman’s guidance, while the Sunday school is likely to keep him—­for a while only—­under the eye of some dear sister who “just loves boys.”  The system is a vicious one.  The lad needs developed masculinity.  If he gets it neither in school nor in the home he will find it on the street corner, through the vicious boy-leader of the degrading poolroom or the alleys.