fact that the family is
so organized that there is no vent to the ideals there, no chance to
have a share in the business of life. Young folks with the sense that
"this is our home," not "our parents', but _ours_" bend their energies
to its adorning, and find in it the chance to realize some of their
passion for beauty and for service.[44]

Mothers usually do better than do fathers in the matter of sex
instruction. Yet they usually begin too late, long after the little girl
has acquired much misleading information in the school. Here, too, the
first aim must be to quicken reverence for life, to set up the
conception of the beauty and dignity of sex functions before the baser
mind of the street has had an opportunity to interpret them in terms of
the dirt.[45]

Above all, with boys and girls, the whole subject, including marriage
and the founding of a family, must ever be treated with dignity and
reverence. Foolish parents jest with their girls about their beaux and
boast that their little ones are playing at courtship. If they could
realize the wonder awakened, followed by pain and then by hardened
sensibilities and coarsened ideals, they would sacrifice their jests for
the sake of the child's soul. We wonder that youth treats lightly the
matter of social purity when we have treated the sacred relations of
life as a jest. If this family in which they now live is to be a place
of sacred associations, of real religious life, the whole matter of
marriage and the family must be treated with reverence. Their practice
will not rise above our everyday ideals as expressed in casual
conversation and in our own practice.

I. References for Study

THE BOY

W.A. McKeever, _Training the Boy_, Part III. Macmillan, $1.50.

_Boy Training_, Part IV. A Symposium. Associated Press.

Johnson, _The Problems of Boyhood_. The University of Chicago
Press, $1.00.

THE GIRL

Margaret Slattery, _The Girl in Her Teens_, chaps. iv, vii. Sunday
School Times Co., $0.50.

Wayne, _Building Your Girl_. McClurg, $0.50.

II. Further Reading

W.B. Forbush, _The Coming Generation_. Appleton, $1.50.

Puffer, _The Boy and His Gang_. Houghton Mifflin Co., $1.00.

Irving King, _The High School Age_. Bobbs-Merrill, $1.00.

_Building Childhood_, A Symposium. Sunday School Times Co., $1.00.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. What are the special needs of