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 out of
sight and to garble others, has perhaps, with any one set of