False Modesty

Ladies' Mirror, Volume V, Issue 2, 2 August 1926, Page 35

False Modesty

Min article which stresses the necessity for 'plain speaking to young children concerning the common facts of life.

I 'he “hush-hush” policy once adopted towards young people by their elders no longer finds favour with modern parents. Enlightened mothers of to-day do not as formerly confuse the significance of the word innocence with ignorance. The terms are not synonymous, and one wonders why they should ever have been thus confused.

In our grandmothers’ day it seems to have been the rule, rather than the exception, for a young girl of gentle birth to have taken the solemn step of matrimony in utter ignorance of the facts of life and of the responsibilities of the matrimonial state.

pagation of the species. One finds that the idea of a “Mummy-tree” and a “Daddy-tree” will readily delight and interest the small child; and from rudimentary instruction of this sort it is easier later on to direct the child’s attention to the mating and nesting habits of birds, and so by gradual stages, to apply the same idea with its differences and variations to the lower mammals, and so on up the scale of life.

To shed a sentimental tear at the sacrificial offering of maidenhood was apparently an occasion for extreme gratification to her elders. But the significance implied is cruelly suggestive of a victim, and who can wonder if, in days gone by, a young, disillusioned wife too often upbraided her mother for having tricked her into marriage?

What child has not at some time or other complained of the “speck” in a breakfast egg? Here comes a natural opening for the mother to explain that this speck is the life germ out of which, given favourable conditions, a chicken will develop in the fullness of time. The child’s attention can be directed to the fact that, without the cock-bird there can be no life germ or speck, and without the life germ the egg could not hatch out, however carefully tended.

In the present altered conditions of life, and the publicity with which social evils and problems arc ventilated, it is scarcely possible, even if it were desirable, to bring up girls to-day in the cloistered atmosphere of a nunnery. But the problem that too often perplexes the modern mother is not so much whether personally to impart information of a certain kind to her children, but how best to set about such necessary instruction.

TT is not urged that knowledge of A this sort should be thrust willynilly upon the small child. Rut the majority of intelligent children will sooner or later be perplexed by such simple problems, and their first natural prompting is to ask openly for information.

The best of all ways is to direct the thoughts of the child-mind into the right channels from infancy. One cannot begin too soon to inculcate into the immature mind reverence for, and some sort of understanding of. Nature’s wondrous and manifold processes of reproduction.

If a mother take such opportunities to speak naturally and unreservedly of such matters, the child will respond, and bring to the sympathetic parent all manner of perplexities that would otherwise rankle in its mind, and provide food for undesirable introspection.

Knowledge of sex life should come to the young not, as so often happens, with an unpleasant jar or shock, but so gradually and naturally that in many instances a child will hold the key to actual knowledge quite unconsciously.

The A.B.C. of botany supplies the child with firm stepping-stones to a wider and fuller understanding of die natural processes of reproduction. The little one should become thoroughly conversant with the idea of such botanical specimens as have separate and distinct sexes, and understand that in certain instances the united functioning of each parent plant is necessary for the pro-

The wise mother will warn her child never to discuss such topics with other children, or indeed until any but those nearest and dearest. But the all-important point to bear in mind is. never lie to a child. If importunate questions are asked, it is easy to assure the child that she will be given proper information so soon as she be old enough to understand. But whenever possible, a child's natural curiosity should be satisfied: and the mother who acts on this principle has little to fear from that bugbear of modern psy-chology“sex-complexes.

Most disastrous of all the many ways of treating this all-important subject is that which leaves the child’s initiation into physiology to the gleaning of odd scraps of distorted knowledge in a hole-and-cor-ner manner: for half knowledge arrived at in this way is almost always gleaned from the whispered innuendos of the vulgar-minded.