many wise and true things, says: "I want to insist, more strongly
than upon anything else, that it is the _secrecy_ that surrounds
certain parts of the body and their functions that gives them
their danger in the child's thought. Little children, from
earliest years, are taught to think of these parts of their body
as mysterious, and not only so, but that they are mysterious
because they are unclean. Children have not even a name for them.
If you have to speak to your child, you allude to them
mysteriously and in a half-whisper as 'that little part of you
that you don't speak of,' or words to that effect. Before
everything it is important that your child should have a good
working name for these parts of his body, and for their
functions, and that he should be taught to use and to hear the
names, and that as naturally and openly as though he or you were
speaking of his head or his foot. Convention has, for various
reasons, made it impossible to speak in this way in public. But
you can, at any rate, break through this in the nursery. There
this rule of convention has no advantage, and many a serious
disadvantage. It is easy to say to a child, the first time he
makes an 'awkward' remark in public: 'Look here, laddie, you may
say what you like to me or to daddy, but, for some reason or
other, one does not talk about these' (only say _what_ things)
'in public.' Only let your child make the remark in public
_before_ you speak (never mind the shock to your caller's
feelings), don't warn him against doing so" (Ennis Richmond,
_Boyhood_, p. 60). Sex must always be a mystery, but, as Mrs.
Richmond rightly says, "the real and true mysteries of generation
and birth are very different from the vulgar secretiveness with
which custom surrounds them."