To shun the Heaven that leads men to this Hell!"
—Shakespeare. Sonnet 129.
At puberty (from the age of 11-15) a boy becomes capable of paternity, a girl of maternity; during adolescence (from puberty to 25) the body in general, and the reproductive organs in particular, grow and mature.
In the boy, semen is secreted, the voice breaks, the genitals enlarge, hair grows on the pubes, face and armpits, and there is a rapid increase in height owing to growth of bone. In the girl menstruation commences, the pelvis is enlarged, bust and breasts develop, the complexion brightens, the hair becomes glossy, and the eyes bright and attractive.
In both, the sexual instinct awakens, and the mental, like the physical, changes are profound. There is great general instability, the child, at one time shy
and reticent, is at another, boisterous and self-assertive.
Parents rarely realize the importance and trying nature of this period when "there awakes an appetite which in all ages has debased the weak, wrestled fiercely with the strong and overwhelmed too often even the noble". Adolescents suffer more from the lack of understanding, sympathy, appreciation and wise guidance shown by their blind parents, than they do from their own ignorance and perfervid imagination.
The transitions from radiant joy and confident expectation, reared on a flimsy basis of supposition, to dire despair consequent on a wrong reading of physical and mental changes, are rapid. Friends, lovers and heroes quickly succeed one another, play their parts, and give place to others.
The awakening of the sexual appetite is usually ignored, and children are left to gain knowledge of man's noblest power from companions, casual references in the Bible and other books, and unguarded references in conversation. Under such conditions not one in a thousand—and your child is not that one—escapes impurity and degraded sex ideas.
Wherever youth congregate, this subject crops up, and those who talk most freely to the others are just those with the most distorted and vicious ideas, whose discourse abounds in obscene detail and ribald jest. Your child must learn either from ignorant, unclean minds, or be taught in a clean, sacred way, which will rob sex of secrecy and obscenity; learn he will; if you will not teach your child, his pet rabbit will.