even in a simple and elementary form, the real facts of their origin but
should, instead, hear a fairy-tale having in it perhaps some kind of
symbolic truth. This contention may be absolutely rejected, without
thereby, in any degree, denying the important place which fairy-tales hold
in the imagination of young children. Fairy-tales have a real value to the
child; they are a mental food he needs, if he is not to be spiritually
starved; to deprive him of fairy-tales at this age is to do him a wrong
which can never be made up at any subsequent age. But not only are sex
matters too vital even in childhood to be safely made matter for a
fairy-tale, but the real facts are themselves as wonderful as any
fairy-tale, and appeal to the child's imagination with as much force as a
fairy-tale.

Even, however, if there were no other reasons against telling children
fairy-tales of sex instead of the real facts, there is one reason which
ought to be decisive with every mother who values her influence over her
child. He will very quickly discover, either by information from others or
by his own natural intelligence, that the fairy-tale, that was told him in
reply to a question about a simple matter of fact, was a lie. With that
discovery his mother's influence over him in all such matters vanishes for
ever, for not only has a child a horror of being duped, but he is
extremely sensitive about any rebuff of this kind, and never repeats what
he has been made to feel was a mistake to be ashamed of. He will not
trouble his mother with any more questions on this matter; he will not
confide in her; he will himself learn the art of telling "fairy-tales"
about sex matters. He had turned to his mother in trust; she had not
responded with equal trust, and she must suffer the punishment, as
Henriette Fürth puts it, of seeing "the love and trust of her son stolen
from her by the first boy he makes friends with in the street." When, as
sometimes happens (Moll mentions a case), a mother goes on repeating these