Sex-education Part 4

It seems to be generally accepted that in the vast majority of cases, unmarried mothers and illegitimate children are due to ignorance of the women. Women who are professionally immoral do not bear many children.[8] In fact, excepting the feeble-minded prost.i.tutes, the general rule is that those who are mothers have only one child and that one the result of the first s.e.xual errors. It is a safe general conclusion that ignorance of s.e.xual laws is responsible for the great majority of cases of illegitimacy.

Edith Livingston Smith, of Boston, in an article on "Unmarried Mothers"

in _Harper's Weekly_ for September 6, 1913, expressed views of the causes of illegitimacy that many a social worker will indorse heartily:

"I see shop girls and waitresses, factory girls and maids, chorus girls, stenographers, and governesses, each with a different story, each with the same terror of the consequences of their folly. 'I never knew,' they tell me, 'I never knew there were such temptations.'...

"Let us go back to the question of s.e.x-education of the public.

Silence has been the policy in the past. We have taught our children biology and natural history, we have taught them physiology, carefully ignoring the organs of reproduction; we have warned the young to make use of their senses and their brains, but we have refused to recognize the very force that guides all these instincts, the vital power of s.e.x. Yet, in the face of this stupidity, acknowledging the call of the age, girls are sent out into the industrial world, where they fight shoulder to shoulder with men. Here they find potential worth of their individualities; here they meet with the same--no greater--temptation than their brothers, but with no knowledge to guide them, no traditions to give them poise, no ameliorating factor of social tenderness or tolerance when inexperience fails to temper their emotions and their femininity....

"A girl's protection must come from without, a boy's from within.

Every boy who reaches the age of adolescence knows his nature. It a.s.serts itself. His s.e.x instincts are dominant, aggressive. He is man, the father of the race, and the laws of procreation are to him an open book. A girl stays innocent until she is awakened. It is the kiss, the touch, the senses stirred, that make her, in the glory of her womanhood or in her shame, acknowledge her s.e.x.

"The very frailty of such a girl, her dependence upon her intuitions and emotions, the triumph of feeling over intellect, place her in greater danger than her brothers, even were their responsibility to society the same. But, add to this the fact that in yielding to s.e.xual temptation she has the burden of child-bearing--how much more necessary that she should have some knowledge of what she is to meet in the world, or what she must combat, lest her emotions forestall her intelligence as physical development precedes mental appreciation."

[Sidenote: Men also ignorant.]

Illegitimacy is often due to ignorance of men as well as of women.

Prominent physicians have cited from their notebooks cases of "protected" children in early adolescence who instinctively entered into s.e.xual relationship in utter ignorance of the natural result. Such cases where the boy is entirely ignorant must be very rare; but there are probably many boys who do not really understand that the s.e.xual act is very likely to lead to a ruined life for the girl companion and her offspring. Arthur Donnithorne, in "Adam Bede," did not forecast that his act would lead to the ruin of Hetty Sorrel and her condemnation for infanticide.

[Sidenote: More than biology needed.]

It is obvious that something more than the ordinary biological facts of reproduction must be included in s.e.x-instruction that tries to prevent such tragedies. In another lecture we shall consider moral teaching, but here let us look at the cold facts of life that ought to be taught at some appropriate time to young people. Not only should they know the simple biological probability that s.e.xual relationship will lead to reproduction, but they should be led to consider the relentless consequences of illegitimate propagation. On this latter point general literature, _e.g._, "Adam Bede" and "The Scarlet Letter," teaches some impressive lessons.

Another point needs emphasis with the numerous young people, especially men, who are not controlled by moral laws, who know the probabilities of illegitimacy occurring, but who have acquired the popular impression that the order of nature is easily changed. Many physicians and social workers know girls who have gone down because they were persuaded to trust the efficiency of popular ways and means of avoiding the natural outcome of the s.e.xual act. Hence, young people of both s.e.xes should somehow learn that under the conditions that usually attend illicit union there is always a strong probability that the ways of nature cannot be easily circ.u.mvented. It is unlawful to explain, except to medical audiences, why this is so; but much illegitimacy will be prevented if it can be made widely known among young men and women that, according to reliable physicians, tragedies of illegitimacy are often due to misplaced confidence in popular methods of contraception.

[Sidenote: Criminal operations.]

There is yet another line of information that if widely known might have some bearing on the problem of illicit s.e.xual relations: Physicians and social workers report that many young men and some women know the possibility of illegitimate pregnancy, but feel safe because they know the addresses of doctors and midwives who will perform criminal operations. The great danger of the operation, especially at the hands of such third-cla.s.s doctors as would attempt to terminate pregnancy criminally, should be widely known by the general public, which only now and then gets a hint in the newspaper reports of a tragedy involving some unfortunate girl.

[Sidenote: Relative pa.s.sion of men and women.]

There is the widespread misunderstanding among young men that s.e.xual hunger is as insistent in virtuous young women as in themselves and that therefore illicit gratification is a mutual gain and responsibility. Some young men may be guided by the information that there is much reliable evidence indicating that, while an innate tendency towards general emotions of affection is strong in the average young woman, there is general absence of the localized pa.s.sions that naturally and automatically develop in young men. In other words, the first definite s.e.xual temptation is likely to come to a young woman from outside herself, and young men should be impressed with their responsibility for allowing even the beginning of situations that may arouse dormant but dangerous instincts.

-- 10. _The Fifth Problem for s.e.x-education: s.e.xual Morality_

In this lecture I shall set forth the proposition that a definitely organized scheme of education should aim directly at making young people strict adherents of the established code of s.e.xual morality. For brevity, I shall occasionally speak of morality and immorality, omitting the qualifying word "s.e.xual."

[Sidenote: Definition of s.e.xual morality.]

This lecture, in fact this entire series of lectures on s.e.x-education, is based on the fundamental proposition that s.e.xual morality demands that s.e.xual union be restricted to monogamic marriage, and conversely, that such s.e.xual relation outside of marriage is immoral. Such a definition of s.e.xual morality is accepted by church and state and the chief citizens in every civilized country. It is the only practical definition which is satisfactory to the vast majority of educated American men and women, even to those who believe in freedom of divorce and in forgiveness for youthful transgressions of the accepted moral code. s.e.xual morality has had changeable standards, and in other times and countries custom has made polygamy and promiscuity acceptable as moral; but the monogamic ideal of morality now prevails in the world's best life.

[Sidenote: Morality in America and Europe.]

Monogamic morality as a protection for family life means much more in America than in Europe. It is true that there is an astounding amount of prost.i.tution in America, but we should be grateful that our ideals of the monogamic family have not been seriously influenced and seem to be slowly but surely improving among our best people. As ill.u.s.trations of our adherence to monogamic law, let me give some facts for comparison of America and continental Europe. In America, illegitimate births are not accurately reported but are probably less than five per cent of the total number for the whole country. Locally the proportion is often very much higher. Thus in Washington, D.C., where (1914) over ten thousand, chiefly negroes, live in alleys between the streets and under extremely unhygienic and immoral conditions, fifty per cent of the children are illegitimate, while but twenty per cent of the colored children born of mothers living outside the alleys, and less than eleven per cent of the total born of all races in the city are illegitimate. In various small American regions with a white population the proportion of illegitimacy is astoundingly high, but the average for the entire country is hopefully low. In many German towns statistics show above twenty-five per cent, and in the whole empire, more than half the legitimate first-born children are conceived before marriage. All writers, the German ones included, seem to agree that the majority of Teutonic men and women enter into free unions before marriage and public opinion does not severely condemn.

In many rural districts of England, France, and Sweden, and even in London and Paris, a large percentage of the marriages are simply legalization of free unions. In short, in all these countries the monogamic ideal is not followed by a large percentage of people. It must be remembered that the great majority of people involved in the above figures are of the peasant and laboring cla.s.ses; conditions are quite different among women of the educated cla.s.ses. These must ultimately set the moral standards for the ma.s.ses.

Our American conditions are quite different, especially outside of the large cosmopolitan cities. It is impossible not to believe in the moral integrity of the great majority of unmarried women in America.

Certainly even in our worst communities we have no such general immorality of women as above European figures suggest. Perhaps wholesale prost.i.tution in which one public woman may be the mistress of ten, twenty, or even fifty men, may tend to protect any equal number of American women; whereas in Europe a peasant woman would probably be for a time the paramour of one man, thus tending to make equal numbers of immoral men and women.

However, it matters nothing for our present purposes what may be the explanation of conditions of s.e.xual promiscuity here or abroad. The one great fact is that our national code of morality is a monogamic one, approved as ideal even by many of those who fail to live strictly in harmony with its dictates. Hence, all Americans who are prominently interested in s.e.x-education believe that it should aim to make our young people more ready to accept and understand morality according to the monogamic ideal.

Those who are interested in this problem of morality as related to marriage should read Foerster's "Marriage and the s.e.x Problem."

[Sidenote: Relation of s.e.x-hygiene and ethics.]

Among those who see the need of teaching s.e.x-ethics as a part of the larger outlook of s.e.x-education, there are two points of view: (1) those who favor the teaching of s.e.x-ethics with the hope of preventing the hygienic problems arising from immorality, and (2) those who believe in s.e.xual morality for its own sake or as an accepted code of conduct.

The founders of the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis placed sanitation first in the name and stated in the const.i.tution that "the object of this Society is to limit the spread of diseases which have their origin in the Social Evil. It proposes to study every means, sanitary, moral, and administrative, which promise to be most effective for this purpose." Most of the papers that have been read at the meetings of the Society have emphasized the sanitary aim as primary, and the moral aim as a means to the hygienic end; but in the past three years there has been a decided tendency towards placing emphasis upon morality, and recently the executive committee of the Society voted to propose the following revised statement: "The aim of this Society is to promote the appreciation of the sacredness of human s.e.xual relation, and thereby to minimize the moral and physical evils resulting from ignorance and vice." This change of emphasis is well expressed in President Keyes's report to the Society (_Journal_, Vol. V, No. 1).

As to the relation between s.e.x-hygiene and s.e.x-ethics as phases of the larger s.e.x-education, there has been much discussion. Several writers have contended that there is some conflict between sanitary and moral ends, but have failed to convince most readers that hygiene and ethics should not be a.s.sociated in teaching. In fact, the most impressive s.e.x-hygiene is that relating to social disease, and its value is chiefly in the ethical appeal for protection of innocent wives and children.

[Sidenote: Dr. Cabot's view.]

Most prominent of those who have declared that hygienic and moral teaching should be dissociated is Dr. Richard C. Cabot, of Boston. I shall discuss his point of view in connection with a later lecture on "Criticisms of s.e.x-education" (-- 46). In the present discussion of s.e.xual morality as an important reason for s.e.x-education, it is sufficient to say that Dr. Cabot seems to disagree with other teachers on the question of the influence of formal instruction on the morals of people.

[Sidenote: Moral and hygienic problems.]

s.e.x-education is now commonly understood to be attempting to solve the moral as well as the hygienic problems of s.e.x. As suggested before, these two lines of problems are clearly related but not coincident; for s.e.xual health and morals are not entirely coordinated. We must not overlook the possibility that the marvellous progress of bacteriological and medical science may some day largely reduce the health problems of s.e.x without improving morality. In fact, s.e.xual immorality that is hygienic does actually exist to a limited extent.

Such facts indicate that while s.e.x-education was first planned to solve health problems, the ultimate s.e.x-education must attempt to guide s.e.xual conduct by moral principles. This coming need of more emphasis on the moral problems of s.e.x should be clearly foreseen by those who are interested in s.e.x-education.

[Sidenote: Super-morality desirable.]

Now, while s.e.xual morality as commonly understood is a direct aim of s.e.x-education, it is not, in the opinion of many people, the ideal and ultimate goal of s.e.x-education in its broadest outlook. There is something higher than conventional morality for the reason that, while natural s.e.xual union in monogamic marriage is never legally or ecclesiastically immoral, it is very often far from ideal. It is not ideal if it is unethical, unhygienic, or unaesthetic. It is unethical, if it is not a bi-personal desideratum (_i.e._, based on mutual love[9]); it is unhygienic when not promotive and conservative of health; and it is unaesthetic if the concomitant psychical reactions are not in harmony with the beautiful in nature and life. In all these ways, morality as commonly and legally and ecclesiastically understood may fall very far short of the ideal s.e.xual relationships. Such an ideal is now held by many men and women who wish that morality might mean to all the world not simply the limitation of s.e.xual union to monogamic marriage, but also that it might be made to mean an all-satisfying monogamic affection and comradeship based on certain physiological, psychical, aesthetic, and ethical laws that underlie human s.e.xual potentialities. Such would be a morality so far beyond the accepted standards that for convenience we may call it super-morality, or the new morality. This, I sincerely believe, is the ultimate goal of s.e.x-education in its largest outlook.

[Sidenote: Super-morality deserves emphasis.]

Among those who have contributed to the s.e.x-education movement there are none who have properly emphasized this super-morality, which, I believe, is the ultimate goal of the larger s.e.x-education for the most enlightened people. The definition that s.e.x-education means all instruction which aims to help young people prepare to solve for themselves the s.e.xual problems that inevitably come to every normal individual, is broad enough to include all questions of hygiene, morality, and super-morality that may come into one's life. The third aim of s.e.x-education (-- 16) which refers to the "social, ethical, and psychical aspects of s.e.x as affecting the individual life in relation to other individuals," should be understood as meaning first a stand for morality and then, this having been attained, super-morality is an easy stage forward. The same idea was touched by the writer in a paper on "Biology in s.e.x-Instruction" (_Journal of Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis_, October, 1911) in these words: "If the great questions of s.e.x relationship are ever satisfactorily solved, it must be through the direct application of the four sciences which are centered around human life, namely, psychology, ethics, sociology, and last, but far from least, aesthetics. As we have seen, biology teaches much directly bearing on the purely physical aspects of the perpetuation of human life, and its study is absolutely necessary for mental att.i.tude and basal facts; but the keystone of the arch of s.e.x-education must be contributed by these four sciences which touch human life much deeper than the merely physical, to which the science of biology is limited. Above all we must look to these sciences for the solution of the problems of s.e.x in relation to society, which more than any physical ills have led to our present problems concerning s.e.xual disharmonies."

[Sidenote: Super-morality not for the ma.s.ses.]

But while there is something attractive in this larger interpretation of s.e.x-education as looking forward to the highest adaptation of s.e.x and life, I realize that as a practical matter we must first of all work with young people for s.e.xual morality as defined by the accepted code. We must remember that the vast majority of people are not yet ready, and will not soon be ready, for a code of super-morality.

Confusion might result from an attempt at wholesale teaching of such idealism of s.e.x relationship. Certainly, so far as s.e.x-education aims to help immature young people, there is nothing to do but hold up monogamic marriage as the basis of our accepted morality; but the higher view of super-morality should be promulgated as rapidly as possible among people who are advanced enough to understand that morality as defined by church and state is not the best interpretation of life's possibilities. To many it is a significant fact that we now find numerous young men and women ready to stand for super-morality as a foundation for monogamic marriage. Fortunately, such individuals need not wait for the world to grasp the idea of super-morals; and already there is many a home in which the higher view of life and s.e.x prevails.

[Sidenote: Cautious teaching concerning immorality.]

Immorality in s.e.xual lines should not be overstressed when teaching young people. Rather should there be emphasis on the moral, the normal, the healthful, the helpful, and the aesthetic processes in human life.

We should emphasize s.e.xual health and morals, not disease and immorality. Concerning immoral living in general, young people should know only enough for necessary warning. Curiosity derived from extensive knowledge of immorality has drawn many a young man into the whirlpool of s.e.xual depravity. It is beyond question that in s.e.xual lines there is the danger that Pope saw when he declared that vice is a monster that seen too oft, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.

s.e.x-education should guard against such dangerous familiarity with vice.

-- 11. _The Sixth Problem for s.e.x-education: s.e.xual Vulgarity_

[Sidenote: Present att.i.tude.]

Even a limited study of the prevailing att.i.tude towards s.e.x and reproduction convinces one that back of the greatest s.e.xual problems of our times is the almost universal secrecy, disrespect, vulgarity, and irreverence concerning every aspect of s.e.x and reproduction. Even expectant motherhood is commonly concealed as long as possible, and all reference to the developing new life is usually accompanied with blushes and tones suggestive of some great shame. Nothing s.e.xual is commonly regarded as sacred. Love and marriage, motherhood and birth, are all freely selected as themes for s.e.xual jests, many of them so vulgar that no printed dictionary supplies the necessary words. And I am not simply referring to the great ma.s.ses of uneducated people, for the saddest fact is that a very large proportion of intelligent people have not an open-minded and respectful att.i.tude concerning s.e.x and reproduction.

[Sidenote: Vast change of att.i.tude needed.]