Ignorant Parents—Ruined Children
What usually happens if one of these elfs of human life has the temerity to speak to father or mother about these strange impulses? A blush of shame, perhaps, and the expression, “You better be thinking of something else,” or “You should be ashamed to be talking of such things,” ends the conversation.
A lady in high station said to the writer, when talking upon this subject, “I went to my mother a few days before my marriage and asked her to tell me about the marriage state. My mother was a good woman, but all she said was, ‘You will find out soon enough.’” God forgive and pity the ignorance of such mothers!
Rebuffed at home, what happens? This child goes out upon the streets and from vulgar playmates, older than it is, through vulgar stories and suggestions, gets a base and lewd conception of all this in his or her life which God meant for beauty, for His glory and the glory of the race, or what is almost as bad, remains in stupid and dangerous ignorance till some vile octopus throws his tentacles about this dream of beauty and sparkling, buoyant youth, and the end of the tragedy is a ruined life, or what more often happens, two of these ignorant young people get together and because of their ignorance commit those acts against chastity which bring ruin and disgrace.
“But,” you say, “such cases as you depict above are the exception and not the rule and I am not afraid of my child being caught in such ways.”
Your Child Is Not Safe
I grant you this and hope by all means it is so. But do not because of this, settle back into comfortable indifference, for there are greater dangers than those stated above from which you cannot say your children are so free.
As children grow up in the home, if it is a right home, they often see father and mother kiss each other, and perhaps they see the mother sometimes lovingly drop down upon the lap of father and put her arms about his neck. The natural question that comes to the mind of the child is, “why does she do that?” No one has ever taken the trouble to anticipate this unspoken question and answer it, and the child goes out to mingle with its playmates of both sexes with this unspoken question unanswered.