Many of my letters show that adult women, wives and mothers, still
grope for the truth that lies plain to the eyes of any simple
child--the truth that there is no such thing as clean and unclean,
only use and misuse. Others, through love, and the splendid
revelations that it makes, have risen so far above their former
misconceptions that they fear to tell a child the facts before he has
experienced the love. I can imagine that in an ideal world some such
reticence might be good and right--but this is far from an ideal
world. We have to train our children relatively, not absolutely, in
the knowledge that we do not control all their environment. I think
the solution of the difficulty is to teach the facts of sex in a
perfectly calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, just as one
teaches the laws of digestion. When knowledge of evil is thrust upon
our child let us be sorry with him that those other children have
never been taught, and that they are doing their bodies such sad
mischief. But don't exaggerate it; don't be too shocked; don't condemn
the poor little sinners, who are also victims, too severely. Charity
toward wrong-doing is the best prophylactic against imitation. We
never feel the lure of a sin which grieves us in another; but often
the call of a sin which we too strongly condemn. Because the very
strength of the condemnation rouses our imaginations, is in itself an
emotion, and, since it is certainly not a loving one, must necessarily
be linked with all other unloving and therefore evil emotions. As far
as possible, let us keep feeling out of this subject, until such time
as the true and beautiful feeling of love between husband and wife
arises and uplifts it.