The Aroused Soul
Are you startled and does your heart cry out, “What can I do? Oh! what can I do?”
The Helper
You can be frank, intelligent and human with your children. Let me tell you, if I may, some things you can do. Let us think of the daughter first, but not because she needs more protection than the son, for God knows they are both in need of all the protection loving, intelligent parents can give them.
If the streets are sloppy and you want to protect your daughter, what do you advise her? To wear her rubbers, of course. If she has a cold and there is a raw wind blowing what do you advise her? Wrap up well and see that her throat is protected. Why do you give this advice? Because on the sloppy streets the feet are the points of attack, and in the raw wind the throat is the point of attack.
Why not be just as sane in dealing with your daughter when you come to teach her to protect her character and self respect?
At what points do these outflooding impulses of glorious womanhood manifest themselves at the surface of the body? The answer is self-evident, the lips and the bosom. You have known this all the time and you have sat idly by and seen your daughters go out into dangers far more deadly than wet feet or inflamed throat without ever saying a word to them about how to protect themselves. Why not sit down by your daughter of fourteen and tell her these truths; tell her there is a vital connection between the bosom and the sex nerve center which is more sensitive than the most delicate electric impulse and explain to her how wonderfully God has arranged the body of woman and why? Why not tell her the same truth as to her lips? Tell her that unless God had made a vital connection between the lips of a woman and the sex nerve center she could not kiss love and nobleness into the life of her children during those glorious days of motherhood. Tell her, with all the love a mother can put into the words, that will live forever in the heart of every true child, that because of these wonderful truths every true young woman should protect her lips and bosom as she would the engagement ring, the pledge of love and approaching marriage. Tell her, with the wifely love upflooding from your heart, why her father has a right to kiss and embrace you and why it will mean the lowering of her character, if not its ultimate loss, for her to give these jewels of hers, even for a moment, into the hands of any man other than he who will be her husband, and as such has the loving right to them.
Why not teach your son the sacredness of womanhood and the manliness of protecting it? Pardon me, if I say I am not writing a theory, but am speaking out of my own heart. I commenced teaching my own son when he was twelve years old and had my last talk with him a month before he was married. He grew up to be a clean young man and I felt a thousand times repaid for my effort when his wife came to her new mother a short time after their marriage and told her with such delight how thoughtful, kind, gentle and refined her lover was in all their relations.