n time.
The need for enlightenment in sexual matters is a product of existing
conditions. Civilization and the social environment are developing along
a plane which subjects the youth to temptations that practically did not
exist in the past. There is a broader and looser code of ethics.
Business monopolizes the entire time of the father, and social and
political unrest and misdirected ambition distracts the mother. The son
or daughter has a wider latitude and a freer reign than they once had.
The opportunities for promiscuous intimacies are easier, and the public
conveniences and utilities lend themselves to the designs of
evil-intentioned and loose-moraled women. The ease of travel, the laxity
of laws, the theater, with its unchaste and indecent plays, the moving
picture snows, the vaudeville resorts, whose highest priced "talent" is
some voluptuous female, who has cultivated the art of draping nudity
with suggestiveness and singing immoral songs, all tend to give youth a
false impression of the reality of life and to make the path of the
degenerate easy and profitable. The rich are growing richer, and their
children are pampered and overfed and underrestrained. Time hangs
heavily on their hands and their only mental effort is to devise new
methods and new ways of satisfying the lust of liberty and
overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the
ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary
to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous
libertine is evolved,--the most insidious and dangerous product of
present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread
of immoral impulses and indecent diseases.
Parents must accept these institutions and agencies as necessary
instruments of evil and adopt measures to nullify their attractiveness.
Eternal vigilance is the price of success, but the quality of the
vigilance must be dictated by love, not by suspicion and distrust.
When the parent can convince the boy that the knowledge is imparted, not
with the intention of depriving him of what he may construe as his
natural liberties and rights, but with the single intention of adding to
the sum total of his pleasure and success, he will look more kindly upon
any proposition that suggests a course of conduct that leads to clean
living. Sex hygiene will eventually find a natural place in the scheme
of education. It will be taught to male and
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