We have found now the answer to the question we were seeking: _the sexual education of the child should begin in its earliest years, since there is no age too young for harm to be done by our neglect or mistakes_.
The first teacher must, therefore, be the mother, who is with the child and should watch over and direct its unfolding nature, by unceasing and selfless care, in these early years when care counts for most. And I would state in passing, that here is another reason—and I hold it the strongest reason of all—why no mother, who is not forced to do so, should leave her home to work and have thus to delegate her sacred duty of caring for her child to another.
But again we are faced with difficulties many and various that will have to be overcome. For while every one must agree that a wise mother is incomparably the child’s best teacher, it is equally true that the unwise mother may do incalculable harm. And when we face, as I am attempting to do, the conditions of the ordinary home, as we all know it to be under the present guidance of ignorance and prejudice in these questions, it seems certain that few mothers can wisely carry out this teaching. Not much hope for the child until this is changed. Thus, it is clear that the sexual education of the child will have to begin with changed conditions in the home and sexual education of the mother.
This is going to be a very difficult task, and I speak here of good mothers, not of bad ones. It is a painful fact that many mothers, who are keenly conscious of their responsibility and most anxious to train their children aright, are too shy to be of much direct use to them in their sexual education. They cannot free themselves, even when they wish to do this, from the vulgarisation of the idea of sex that has resulted from their own training.
There can be nothing gained by pretending that this question of sexual education is going to be an easy matter. It may be so in theory, it will not be easy in practice. Sometimes, indeed, I am so filled with doubts and sadness, that, if doing and saying nothing were working well, I might be tempted to think that to establish sexual training under present conditions was even a worse course than to go on leaving the matter alone. But I know that all is not well. By continuing our policy of negligence and cowardice we are holding open the way to disasters in the future, the far-reaching evils of which we are only now beginning to understand.