The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young

by Margaret Warner Morley

The end in view being to prepare the young soul for the great battle of life, to put upon it the armor of a knight which shall be borne untarnished, the first instruction concerning the facts of the reproductive life may well be impersonal, poetical, beautiful, filling the mind with sentiment,—not sentimentality,—so that the mental vision of this side of life shall be one worthy of the glorious mind of man. To keep the mind of the child wisely impressed with the beauty, the achievements, of the great reproductive force in nature, which is directly responsible for every living thing on the earth, is to help immeasurably toward branding a high instead of a low ideal on his soul,—an ideal which he cannot lose when he reaches the great climax that transforms him into an adult capable of reproducing his kind, and when whatever most powerfully influences him will become a determining factor in the administration of his whole after life.

Side by side, however, with this illumination of nature's methods should go the most careful training and watchfulness in the care of the child's own person,—not that he need connect the two in the least. Later, of course, he will, and should as time goes on, have the most careful instruction concerning his own body and its functions. There are a few simple observances that every human being should learn from childhood, and learn so thoroughly and so fix as a matter of habit, that he can never break away from them.

At first the parent attends to the child's wants, later the child must care for himself; and while he ought not to be burdened with too much thought of his body, yet there are a few simple rules of hygiene which he should follow as a matter of habit, and there is one subject upon which he should be most carefully instructed,—that is, maintaining the sexual purity of his body. He should be taught from the beginning to think of his body as the sacred temple of his soul, which it is a sin against nature and against God to defile. That the child's body be kept uncontaminated is one of the most priceless gifts his parents can bestow upon him; the value of this was so keenly felt in antiquity that at a certain period of Greek supremacy the laws were most stringent concerning it, a youth sinning against himself being put to death.

There seems to be a growing need of watchfulness over children in this respect; few who have not looked especially into the matter have any idea of the prevalence of harmful habits. Sex abuse has been called "the disease of civilization"; and where it takes firm root, it is exceedingly disastrous to the life of a nation, not only destroying, directly or indirectly, individuals, but so weakening the stock that the whole nation degenerates.

The root of the difficulty perhaps lies in the low ideal of this age on that subject. Where the ideal is low there can be no hope of a high result. That the current theories which control the lives of the many in this direction are false is the conclusion of the best scientific work of the present times. Where these theories, however, have been bred into youth for generations, they may to an extent be true simply as a result of this breeding. Darwin in his "Descent of Man" says: "It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason."

For the parent, then, to inculcate this quasi instinct against sex abuse in any form is to give the child the best armor he could possibly have; and if this could be done for generations, the instinct would not need such careful fostering, as it would be born more or less developed with the child.

Every parent of a purely reared child is putting a stone in the foundation of prosperity for this wonderful new civilization, which will go on evolving, or die of decrepitude, just as its central dynamic force, the sex life of the people, finally decides. Sex immorality is, as every one knows, one of the signs of the approaching death of a nation.

Few young mothers realize the great need of watchfulness against the formation of bad habits in even young children. And many make the mistake of supposing that with children instruction can take the place of watchfulness. During the early years of a child's life careful watching as well as careful teaching, is necessary. Nor does the social grade of the child bring immunity or the reverse. The mother who says to herself, "Oh, my child would not," does not understand the nature of the problem. Anybody's child may innocently fall into this error, and every mother should equip herself with all the information necessary to guard against this most insidious of all foes and to meet it if it appears, realizing that watchfulness is necessary almost from the hour of birth,—even children in the cradle frequently needing attention in this respect. Every young mother should know that among a certain class of people, from whom her nurse will likely be drawn, there are many who have theories most pernicious to the welfare of the child, the nurse herself not infrequently, through ignorance perhaps, being guilty of initiating the babe into a course from which it will be most difficult for him ever to depart. It is not safe to take for granted that any child does not need a certain amount of watchfulness. The most highly organized, most "high strung" sensitive natures are among those most in danger, not only from forming unfortunate habits, but from their results.

Watchfulness during the early years of the child's life, instruction in caring for himself, plenty of outdoor exercise, unstimulating food, sufficient sleep, the cold bath, agreeable occupation, abundant material for wholesome thought and imagination, will in most cases bring the child safely to the first great milestone in his life journey, the period of adolescence.

As the child grows older he should be warned against certain dangers which may beset him from other vicious or ignorant children; and of course the child's temperament, his heredity, the weakness or strength of his desires in the direction of sense pleasures, and the amount of will-power he possesses will guide the parent in the nature and amount of such instruction. Some mothers whose children have strong animal instincts are afraid to instruct them on that account. Such children are in peculiar need of watchfulness and knowledge, and the right kind of instruction does not tend to waken the senses. Of course no child should be sent away to school without an impressive warning against certain habits all too prevalent among boys in boarding schools. Here it may be wise to let him know something of what he will be sure to see or hear, that he may not be taken unawares, puzzled and tempted by things which to him will seem not to have come within the experience of his parents if they said nothing to him about them. The boy warned by his parents of the falsity of the strange doctrines he may hear preached by these unguided youths will not readily be deluded. The pure but ignorant boy going for the first time into the new life of the school, looking up to the older boys with that peculiar veneration the younger boy almost always feels for the older, moved in his senses by what he hears and sees, may speedily forget such home warnings as seem vague and pointless, and he may yield himself to a course most disastrous to his future.