Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Our unconscious example must always be far stronger in its result on the child’s mind than anything we can say. Of what use can our teaching be, if, through our own want of purity, the concealments that breed curiosity and shame, are evident in all our attitude to our bodies and to the physical facts of our being? The child is not shown the duty of reverence for himself; he is not taught the beauty of all the processes of his young life; the sex organs are left without proper names, and the child is told that it must not speak of these parts. We are continuously careless in our conversations and in our acts before our children. We take them to see picture plays and allow them to read books and tell them stories in which love is vulgarised, and all kinds of false statements are allowed. In these and in numerous other ways, weeds are caused by our folly to spring up in the child’s mind. We can never undo by any teaching a sense of shame in sex and love that our actions and thoughtless words have revealed to the quick intelligence of the child.

It is entirely false to think that the facts of sex plainly and simply told will shock and seem strange to the young child. It is to the prurient only that there is anything ugly or disillusioning in birth and love. The child will receive your information with wonder and guileless delicacy. The mother need have no fear of her child, only of herself. The error in all these cases is the error of our own impurity of thought; the hateful idea that the facts of sex are ugly and disillusioning. Here we have the key to the whole problem: it explains the utter helplessness and weakness of our attitude. It will be very long before this can be changed; the evil is rooted so deeply in almost all of us.

A child of four and even younger will begin to ask questions of its mother. As soon as the questions are put they should be answered in such a manner that the child’s curiosity is satisfied. And this brings me to what I hold to be more important than all else. In this difficult question of sexual enlightenment, it is the child who must be the guide of the parent. I regard this as the most urgent rule for every mother. Never arouse sexual curiosity in the child, either directly by offering instruction on the subject or indirectly by careless speech or action, but always be ready to satisfy such curiosity at once when it is present in the child’s consciousness.

This is, of course, to say that every question of the child must be answered by the truth. It goes without saying, that the mother must give her answer just as if she were talking on any other subject, or explaining the function of any other organ of the body. This course can be adopted only where adults are able to talk of these subjects without shame. There must be no hushed voices, no special manner in speaking. Any hint of such feeling or hesitancy on the part of the mother will communicate itself at once to the quick consciousness of the child. Here again I am driven back to the difficulty of our own fear of sex: this is the stumbling-block that hinders the right teaching of our children.

I know there are many parents who will fear this openness of speech and action, holding that it is dangerous to break through the mystery and reserve with which we have surrounded the physical facts of love. This danger is felt to be specially great in the case of girls. I am certain this is a very deep mistake. Show the child that the mystery of sex rests in its sacredness: teach it that, for this reason, we do not speak of the subject lightly, holding it in too great reverence for common speech; but never let it be thought of as a subject tabooed, one on which openness of thought is not nice, for thus it will become shameful, and uncleanness and not mystery will keep it in the dark places of the child’s consciousness.

But here I would give a further word of warning to the mother. She must not expect or desire from her child a continued attention to her teaching, nor must she force by over-emphasis or any kind of moral warnings a false sentiment in her teaching. I believe this to be very important. The child, at the age when such questions first will be asked and should be answered, will tire very quickly of any information that the mother gives. It will break off to run away and play, or will interrupt the most beautiful and carefully prepared lesson. But if the mother is wise, she will never go beyond the interest of the child.

Facts communicated in this way and at such natural opportunities are subconsciously noted and swiftly dismissed from the consciousness of the child, who soon becomes interested in something else after the disconnected discursive fashion of childish thinking. And, when so treated, it will be found that children are not inordinately interested in these questions; they will break off from what they are asking you about birth or the procedure of the sexual act to talk about toy soldiers or dolls. This very carelessness in attention is, indeed, the immense value of this form of teaching: the child has the information and yet does not trouble about it, and ignores it when it is not to the point. Such can never be the case when the information is given in the form of a set lesson and interconnected with moral teaching. So important is this that I think it better and safer for the mother to err on the side of saying too little than saying too much. All that is essential is that the truth should be told.

Now this is not going to be easy. Above all else, it is necessary to establish, as far as is possible, feelings of openness and sympathy between the mother and her child. And for this it is essential that the mother must herself have the most absolute faith in the purity of sex, and in her own physical relationship to her child and to its father. Without this nothing that is worth gaining can be gained from any form of teaching. The slightest doubt or uncertainty on the mother’s part is fatal; then, at once, shame will begin to creep in to hurt the young and sensitive life.

There is another matter that must be considered. It is often stated, by the most careful parents as well as by those who are careless, that complete and perfect sympathy exists between them and their children. “My child tells me everything” has been the thought to bring comfort to many mothers. But is this true? For myself I have wondered if such an ideal can ever be attained fully. Nor am I certain, if we think of the child only, whether it is an ideal really to be desired. We have to remember that we—the parents—belong to one generation and the child to another. And this barrier of age is felt in nothing more strongly than it is in sex. The intense and complicated forces that have moulded us are but awakening in the young life. We can, at best, hope only to guide our children; we can give to them some little knowledge gained by the experience of our mistakes, but we cannot give them the knowledge they can gain only from life, nor can we save them from making their own mistakes.