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

by Margaret Warner Morley

Nothing draws a child so close to his mother as the knowledge, rightly conveyed, of how truly he is a part of her. Almost without exception the young boy learning the truth from the lips of his mother has a new feeling of reverence and love for her. Countless are the testimonies of mothers as to the result of telling this fact. One illustration will answer as an example of hundreds of similar ones. A certain little boy listened open-eyed to the story; then, the blood mounting to his cheeks, he threw himself into his mother's arms, exclaiming, "Oh, mamma, that is why I love you so!"

Moreover, if the right kind of confidence is established between mother and child, the child will come to his mother with his questions and difficulties instead of trying to satisfy his curiosity elsewhere.

The question is often asked, Will not close companionship and sympathy between mother and child in a general way produce the same result, causing the child to confide in the mother in case of needing information, without any previous talks on the subject?

Of course the closer the relationship between the two the more easily will the child confide everything; yet with very many children, if this one subject is avoided (and particularly is this true as the child grows older), it will not be introduced by the child, no matter how much he may desire the knowledge, or how intimate in other ways may be his talks with his mother. The judicious mother can get a hold upon her son through this subject that nothing else gives; she can keep him closer to her, and oftentimes can guide him safely over difficult places. What is true of the son is of course true of the daughter. The little girl will respond as readily as her brother to confidences of this kind, and will find them as helpful. She very often escapes much that her brother in his freer life meets, yet undoubtedly in the great majority of cases the instruction is as vitally necessary to her as to him.

While the earliest teachings seem to fall most naturally to the mother, the father should also share the responsibility and the privilege, talking with frank confidence upon the subject whenever occasion offers.

The question is often asked, Is it not better for the father to talk to the boys, the mother to the girls?

There no doubt are cases where this might be wise, but the mother, understanding the close relationship between her son and herself that may come through such talks,—a relationship continuing and increasing in value as the years go on,—would feel that she could not afford to lose anything so precious to both her boy and herself.

While the establishment of this relationship might be difficult or even impossible later, it is easily begun in childhood and as easily continued. Moreover, many boys are specially helped by talking with their mother. They often feel in her a quicker sympathy and a more perfect understanding of their needs; and as their instinctive desire is to understand life from her point of view as well, they often feel something in her which is lacking in the father. On the other hand, the boy who is talked to exclusively by the mother, particularly when he begins to develop into manhood may say, or think, "Oh, you cannot understand; you never were a man." The father's voice here is needed, but if that is impossible there is abundant written testimony and advice from well-known men to youth on this subject which can be put into the boy's hands.

While the child's best teachers of these intimate truths are undoubtedly his parents, it may happen for various reasons that this is impossible. The child may have grown to an age where the timid parent, who has not hitherto realized the necessity, cannot approach him. Or there may be other reasons. In such cases the duty may devolve upon some one else capable of fulfilling it. Such a one may be, should be, the minister. It ought to be a part of the recognized duty of every minister of a congregation to see that such of his young men as desire it are instructed in the facts necessary to their well-being in this direction. It is not enough to tell them to live pure lives; they must be helped to understand their own organizations and everything pertaining to this side of life that they need or want to know. There should be similar help obtainable by the young women of the congregation from some competent woman approved by the minister. Purity is an integral part of the religion of the new civilization, and purity and everything helping to it should be as conscientiously and thoroughly taught in the churches as are any other religious truths. In the church the young man, the young woman, should be able to find corroboration of the sex-truths taught him by his parents; and those young people not so fortunate as to receive instruction at home should be able to drink from their religious teachers deep draughts from this spring of salvation.

The family physician ought also to be a refuge of help for the young; and here the woman doctor, that blessing of these later days, can do a work of reformation and salvation. No one has more power to sow seeds of wisdom in the homes of the people, helping the mother to understand and desire the careful instruction of her children, and where the mother requests it, being ready to give the needed help to the young people themselves.