How to tell the story of life

Front matter

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Prefatory Note

In every home where there is a normal child, the question, ''Where do babies come from?" will be asked of papa and mama. An angel could not ask this question more naturally, sincerely and sweetly. The answer received by the child will have much to do with his future character. Parents should be well prepared and welcome this question as a most precious opportunity for giving the child this most valuable information.

The intellectual and moral awakening, on personal and social purity, has created a very large demand for a small and cheap book that presents in very simple language and in story form the information that parents should give in reply to the above question. This little volume is sent forth with the sincere desire and prayer that it may supply this demand, prove helpful to many thousands of parents and be a life-long blessing to their children.

Yours for the Uplift of Humanity, Marietta, Ohio, July 1, 1913. T. W. Shannon.

Chapter I

The Right of a Child to a Knowledge of Sex.

A child's right to sex knowledge. — What gives to a child the right to a knowledge of any kind? Nature and nature's God give to every child an inalienable right to acquire knowledge. Every normal child comes into this world with a capacity for knowledge. xA.s the child grows and his mind develops there is a growing demand for knowledge. The child's safety, health, happiness, success, attainments, here and hereafter, depend upon his receiving true knowledge in the right way. A knowledge of sex is fully as necessary to these ends as knowing how to read, write and count, or to know language, history, mathematics, geography, science and mechanics. There is an earlier conscious desire and moral demand for a knowledge of sex than for knowledge along many of the lines mentioned.

A child early seeks this knowledge. — At the ages of

four, five and six the child will begin to ask such

questions as, Where does the rain come from ? Where

does the snow come from ? Where do the clouds come

from? When kitties, pigs, puppies, calves or colts are born, the child very naturally asks about their origin. A child will just as surely ask, "Mama, where was I before I was born? How did I get into this world?" etc. An angel could not be more 'sincere or ask a purer question. This is no evidence of the child's depravity, but an evidence of the child's mental awakening and demand for knowledge that it is prepared to receive. For a child not to ask about his origin until he is eight or ten means one of two things : either he has heard about his birth and is keeping this information from his parents, or he is not developing mentally as rapidly as he should. Investigation will usually reveal the first to be the explanation. When a child has once become interested about his origin, he will never rest satisfied until he has received a proper explanation.

Sex impulse controlled by reason and will. — The lower animals are governed by instinct; man is governed by reason. The lower animals instinctively keep out of the fire, avoid poisons and places of clanger. But nature will no more teach a child not to violate the laws of sex, than nature will teach an infant not to crawl into the fire, a pool of water, over a precipice, or not to eat glass or poison. The sexual impulse among the lower animals is guided and controlled by instinct. In man this impulse is to be guided by reason and controlled by the will. The attitude of reason and will toward the sex impulse will be almost wholly determined by the instruction given. If this education is timely and wisely imparted, scientific and moral, the virtue of the individual will, in nearly all cases, be safeguarded. If the child's education in this matter has been wholly neglected, he will find his reason and will weak and powerless in the presence of temptation. If he has received his information alone from impure sources, he will most likely be immoral as a matter of choice.

Conscience, a child of education. — Why does the small boy's conscience condemn him when he steals, lies and is disobedient, but does not when he practices the secret vice ? The only answer to the question is, he was normally taught by the school, church and home regarding the wrong of stealing, lying and disobedience, but received little or no instruction regarding self pollution. Why do young men hang their heads in shame when guilty of lying, stealing, drunkenness and murder, but boast of their conquests over female virtue? The simple and only reason is the school, church and home gave them normal instruction regarding the first crimes but did not regarding the last.

Education of the past inconsistent. — The children are taught the correct names and functions of every organ of the body, as if health, happiness, success, character and destiny depended upon this knowledge being correctly given, until they come to the sacred organs and function of human reproduction. Here books and teachers have been as silent as death, as if health, happiness, success, character and destiny had no relation to a true knowledge of sex. If we would safeguard the health, happiness and character of the children of to-day, who are to be the youths of tomorrow and the men and the women of the succeeding day, we must give our children a correct knowledge of themselves.

Physical reasons for sex education. — In a health pamphlet recently circulated by a state board of health we find a statement claiming that if all men and women understood and kept the laws of health there would be a need for only about one doctor in ten that we have to-day. In a small book for college young men by that prince of doctors, Prince A. Morrow, he states that fully one-half of all the physical ailments common to young men from fifteen to twenty-five years of age is due to a violation of sex. No other line of education is so essential to a child's health and physical development as this. If the child is told the truth about his birth, he will come freely and frankly to his parents for additional information as he grows older. The child will welcome and appreciate information and advice voluntarily given.

Mental reasons for sex education. — Dr. Pique, in his investigations of the asylums of one nation, found that eighty-two per cent, of insanities among the females and seventy-eight per cent, among the males involved their sexual mechanism, and that early sex instruction would have wholly prevented much of this insanity and would have postponed the mental break in many other cases until later in life. The violations of the laws of sex is no doubt the largest source of mental degeneracy. This is the mental reason why children have a right to a knowledge of sex.

As a result of not understanding the laws of sex nature many boys and young men become mentally morbid over an imaginary sexual trouble. This mental worry is injurious to health, interferes with their studies or business and often leads to real sexual troubles. Boys should be free from worry and should be cheerful, happy and full of hope and purpose.

Moral reasons for sex education. — More men are kept from Christ and more men fail in living the Christian life, because of their sex problems,, than because of all other problems combined. Here are the moral and religious reasons why children should be properly instructed in matters pertaining to sex.

CHAPTER II. The Old Way and The Results

Sex, in the near past, tabooed. — In the past, Anglo- Saxon prudery and mock modesty made sex a tabooed subject between parents and children, teachers and pupils and the minister and his congregation. Few of these leaders of the people, in the past, thought of sex knowledge as being pure, vital or sacred, but a knowledge of sex was regarded as something essentially impure, unimportant and sinful. With these convictions, few people felt that it would be wise, or that they were under any moral obligation to give sex instruction to children, youths or matured people.

Evasions and falsehoods, why? — So deeply intrenched

was this idea in the minds of parents, that whenever

they were asked by their child, "How did I get into

this world?" "Where was I before I was born?" or

"Where do babies come from?" they evaded the

chastising the child,, or the child was told some kind of

falsehood; such as, "The angels brought you," "a

big bird brought you," "an old woman brought you,"

"the doctor brought you in his satchel," "you were 12 found in a sink hole," "in a brush pile," "in a big bird's nest," or "in the cabbage patch." No wonder we find so many cabbage-headed children.

A personal experience.— When only a small boy, some four or five years old, the author was called from his bed quite early one spring morning and was informed that the fine mare had "found" a colt. With boyish haste, excitement and enthusiasm he was soon viewing the prettiest and finest colt he had ever seen. For a very brief time he looked at the playful colt, first with admiration, then with wonder and finally his boyish curiosity asserted itself. Very naturally he enquired, "Where did the old mare find the colt?" He had been given to understand for several days that the mare had been placed in the orchard with a view to her "finding" a colt. He had put to his parents a very direct question. It had to be disposed of then and there. Three methods were available — evasion, a falsehood or the truth. It was a psychological moment; a golden opportunity. But, alas ! they did not see it in the light of the "new way," telling the truth. There was a perpetual brush pile in one quarter of the orchard that received the annual trimmings from all the trees. Hens and turkey hens found their nests there. The sows found their pigs there. The cows found their calves there. The big snakes were found there. The servants had seen ghosts there. He was told that the mare found her colt in that brush pile. He was prepared to believe it. For six months no brush pile escaped being searched by his eager eyes.

A Canadian's experience. — Years ago, while traveling on a fast Canadian Pacific train across those "magnificent distances," so characteristic of the then unsettled Canadian west, in conversation with the conductor, the author asked, "Did you ever have one of your children to say, 'Papa how did I get into this world?' " "O, yes; I have had that experience several times in my family of seven children," he replied. "Did you find any embarrassment or difficulty in answering your children?" he was asked. "No, that was easily done," was his answer. Thinking that he might have some original and helpful method of solving this perplexing problem, the author requested the conductor to relate how he had told the last child. His reply was, "Only a few weeks ago my youngest child was sitting in my lap. She gave me a searching look and said, 'Papa, how did I get into this world?' At the time, we were sitting in front of the window. Recalling the condition of the weather at the time of her birth an answer was suggested to me. My reply was, 'Darling, the day you came to our home, papa was standing here at the window watching it rain and wishing that God might send us a little girl. It was not long until he saw you falling from the cloud and ran out and caught you and brought you to your mama.' " It is heathenish to tell a child such lies.

A southern mother's experience. — At the close of a lecture in a southern town, on "How to Tell the Story - of Life to a Child," a mother of culture, influence and wealth, said to the author, "When my boy was five years old he asked me about his origin. Remembering that he was born about half-past three one afternoon, about the time the Cotton Belt train passes through our town, I said, 'Why, son, God sent you into this town on the Cotton Belt train one afternoon. Our doctor was at the depot and saw you. Knowing that we wanted a boy and noticing that you were a fine fellow, he persuaded the conductor to give you to him. He put you in his satchel and brought you to our home.' Now," said the mother, "my boy is nine years old and he has never referred to that matter since. Do you suppose that he has been told by the servants and school mates?" She was urged to take her boy into her confidence, talk to him about these matters and get him to tell her all that he had learned in the wrong way and from whom. She reported the next day that she found that his little mind had been polluted with obscene words and stories for three years.

Few helps for parents. — The parents of the past loved their children as devotedly as the parents of the present ; they were as deeply concerned in safeguarding their children's virtue as are the parents of to-day. In the past, parents had no opportunity to hear a course of instructive and helpful lectures on how to handle the sex problems cf childhood and there were no simple and practical books from which they could get the help they needed. One would be a very poor teacher of mathematics if all he knew about the subject had been obtained from ignorant playmates and servants. Just so, we are to remember that the parents of the past, and indeed nearly all of to-day, received only half truths about sex from the ignorant and vicious elements of society. Hence, the majority of parents have been and are still unprepared to handle, intelligently and effectively, the sex problems in their homes.

Ignorance essential to innocence. — Again, we are to remember that our parents were trained to think of the organs of reproduction and their functions as being our shame and humiliation and that all reference to sex was immodest, if not sinful. They believed that innocence was inseparable from sex ignorance. They considered it their moral and religious duty to keep their children ignorant of their origin as long as possible, and the girls were to be kept ignorant until after marriage, if at all possible. They did not believe it possible to tell, even a ten or twelve year old child, the truth about his birth, without great moral injury. They believed it to be their most sacred duty to keep their' children ignorant about these facts. Very naturally they would shame, ridicule, scold, punish or tell the child a falsehood in reply to the question, "how did I get into this world?" They would do this as religiously as they would go to church on Sunday.

Bad environment, not truth, injures. — Conscientious parents remember that their minds were poisoned for years after they were told of their birth by playmates and servants. The conclusion, "if we tell our children these things, it will have the same dire consequences on them that it had on us," is very natural. These parents fail to see the difference between the effects of truth and the effects of the environment of truth. To illustrate : truth is very much like gold, unaffected in quality by its environment. Here are three nuggets of gold. One is in a slop bucket, the second is in a tar bucket and the third is in a flowing stream of clear water. Suppose you lift these nuggets from their environments. In the first instance your hand is soiled and must be washed. In the second case you have tar on your hand. It will require hot water, soap and turpentine to remove it, and still some will remain to be worn off. In the third instance, where you lift the gold from the stream, your hand is made all the cleaner by coming in contact with the environment of the gold. But this nugget of gold was no purer in quality than the other nuggets. In the other instances it was the environment that soiled your hand, not the gold. Just so, you may find some truth in a dime novel that is as pure as similar truth found in the Bible, but you found it in a literary slop bucket. You may find some truth in one of Bob Ingersoll's books that is as pure as similar truth found in the Bible, but you should not have gone to such a literary tar bucket for it. In either event, time, personal effort and divine help will be required for the moral effects to be effaced. If you get truth from the lips of a wise teacher, a noble father, a pure mother or a good book, your mind and life will be all the purer by coming in contact with such purifying environment. It is not the truth that the child receives that does the harm, it is the environment of half truths that poisons the minds of the youth. If a little five year old child could understand, in all of the details, the conception, gestation and birth of a child, and this information was given by a noble father or pure mother, it could do the child no harm. If that statement is not true, then God has arranged a reproductive scheme, the knowledge of which is sinful and leads to sexual sinning. In this event God would be personally responsible for all the sins of this nature.

Results of the old method. — It is not our purpose to question the love or motives of the parents of the past or present, who hold to the policy of ignorance as a safeguard to virtue. We wish now to study the results of this old method.

Under the old policy, when a bright, innocent child eagerly enquired how he got into this world, and met with ridicule, shame, and the order to "clear out," or a falsehood, what were the effects on the child ? Could the child reason out why he should be thus treated? Did he feel that his question had been satisfactorily answered ? If he had sinned, could he see in what way ? Was he made wiser by the answer to his question? Did it lead him to a true, pure and sacred regard for sex? Did it lead to greater love for and confidence in his parents? We shall see.

How children find out. — It was not many days after this when a servant or a playmate discovered the unsatisfied interest of the child and said, "I know something you don't know. You would like to know it too. I will tell you, if you will promise not to tell your papa and mama. It is how babies get into this world." Such is the child's absorbing interest in the origin of life, that, however obedient he may be, he will agree not to tell his parents. Now the child eagerly listens to the story of life told in half-truths, couched in smutty language. What are some of the results of getting this information in that way? (1) He discovers that his parents evaded his question or told him a falsehood. He was not capable of reasoning why his parents dealt with his question as they did. He now has the two stories of life before him. The one just received is the most reasonable. He concludes, "this is the truth, what my parents told me was a falsehood." (2) To the extent that the child comprehends the falsehood of the parents does he lose confidence in them in all matters pertaining to sex. (3) He has learned to keep such information a secret from his parents. (4) He cannot contemplate the initial of his own life and his parents' relation thereto as being sacred. The early impressions on the mind of a child are not easily removed. Ugly words, impure pictures and smutty stories, in all their vile suggestiveness, ofttimes remain through much or all of life. (5) He has been taught a vulgar and untrue sex vocabulary. (6) The sexual organs and their functions are sources of continuous impure thought and occasional jest.

False training degrading. — God never planned that his children should entertain such degraded and demoralizing views of these divinely created organs and their sacred functions. It is impossible to estimate the evil influence of this false training. Just to the extent that one fails to see that God is the author of sex, that sex is sacred and pure, his glory and not his shame, to that extent has a false training degraded him. Yet there are those who estimate their culture, refinement and piety by the degree of conscious shame and condemnation they experience when they think or speak of any phase of sex.

How confidence is lost. — Does a child lose confidence in his parents when he discovers that they have told him a falsehood about his origin? The author receives hundreds of letters, and interviews thousands of young men annually regarding their sex problems. Not one in a hundred of these young men has received the truth about his origin or a word of warning concerning the secret sin. With absolute innocence and confidence those young men went to their parents in their childhood and enquired of their origin. Treated as described, they went to evil minded ones for information and were led into vice. To-day there is not one boy in fifty who, while in his teens, goes freely to his parents for such information as is necessary for him to have, if he is to keep his life pure and chaste. There is not one girl in twenty-five who, in her teens, goes freely to her mother for such information as her developing womanhood requires. This is not as it should be. It is not natural.

Girls fall because they are ignorant. — The author, in company with reliable and responsible men, such as detectives, has visited the "red light" districts of many large cities, looked into the faces of many thousand erring girls, ranging in age from twelve to twenty-five, a majority of whom had fallen before they were sixteen. Many of these girls were asked, "Did your mothers give you such information about your origin, your sexual nature and your danger in associating with young men as a girl should have had?" Not one in a thousand could say, "Yes, my mother told me."

An incident. — Nine out of ten girls who are fallen, fell not because of a vicious choice to do wrong, but because of ignorance. A prominent physician, a teacher in the medical department of one of our largest state universities, only a few days ago, told the author an experience he had had only a few days before. A mother came to him with her ailing daughter of sixteen summers. The diagnosis disclosed that she was a prospective mother. She was perfectly surprised. She, with little hesitancy, admitted relations with her friend, but claimed that he had told her that that was not the way children were brought into this world. She did not know the name, the nature or the results of the act that involved the happiness, character and destiny of three souls — hers, his and their offspring. No tongue can tell, no rhetoric can describe and no imagination can depict the sad consequences of this one mother's neglect. Whenever a child has grown up to maturity under this policy of silence and remained pure, it was not because of ignorance, but due to some other cause.

Another incident. — In a western town the author was asked to give the high school boys a special lecture. After this lecture was over, while passing through the hall, he was approached by the lady principal, with a request coming from the young ladies of the high school, asking for a special lecture adapted to their age and sex. The request being granted, she added, "Several of the girls said, 'O, we wish he was a lady lecturer! There are so many questions we should like to ask, but we would hesitate to ask a gentleman lecturer.' I said, 'Girls, why don't you ask your mamas those things?' With the most perfect surprise, they replied, 'Why, we would not think of asking mama such questions.' " This loss of confidence in their mothers started when they first asked about their origin. Can a system of moral training be right when it produces such results?

The harvest.— In round numbers 2,000,000 children are born into this Christian nation annually. One-fourth of this number die before they are seven years old. Annually one and one-half million children ask the question of their parents, "How did I get into this world?" Not one in twenty gets a kind, truthful, and intelligent answer. Nineteen out of twenty are told a falsehood or they are ridiculed and ordered to "clear out," "shame on you," "I am disgusted with you," "better never let me hear such an ugly question out of you again." That settles it. The golden chain of confidence and influence is broken. Never again will these children return to their parents for information, advice and counsel on matters of sex. Elsewhere, they will find those who will welcome their questions and even introduce the matter and gladly supply them with the information desired. These children, a million and a half strong, are soon adrift on the storm-tossed, passion-seething sea of early adolescence. They are without a moral chart or compass. They know not their moral longtitude and latitude. They are drifting, rapidly drifting towards ports unknown to them. The church now becomes busy in her work of rescue. But the church leaves them ignorant of their impulses, weaknesses and dangers.

Quarter of a million boys sacrificed annually. — Time passes. Many of the rescued are caught by the tides of passion and are swept back into deeper depths of passion's sea. The boys are now sixteen to twenty-five. They have boon and base companions. Their imaginations are at fever heat with morbid curiosity and interest in the billows of sensual pleasures that heave just ahead of them and their ambitions are aflame with lascivious daring. In these lustful billows a quarter of a million young men annually sacrifice the priceless gem of manhood's virtue. Now they are in the whirlpools of sinful passion where eighty per cent, of them become diseased and many of them perish in the awful maelstrom of lust.

Sixty thousand girls sacrificed annually. — With the passing of time, the girls from twelve to twenty, many without the safeguard of knowledge, are associating freely, gaily with their boon male companions, exposed to all the temptations and dangers incident to their social environment on this same sea of passion. In the immeasurable depths of this sea of human depravity sixty thousand of these girls annually lose the priceless gem of womanhood's virtue. Owing to the double standard of morals, a lifeline of hope is thrown to all of the morally wrecked young men, while nearly all of the sixty thousand wrecked young women are left to perish in the maelstrom of immorality, without a glance of sympathy or word of pity.

The blackest and meanest sin of present-day civilization is our false, double standard of morals. In the name of all that is decent and just why should the woman be crucified and put to open shame, while the man is lionized and made popular, for the same act ?

Never, until we secure a single standard of morals, the same treatment for the man that we give the woman, can we hope to make much headway in reforming society.

Society, like God, should condemn in the man what they condemn in the woman.

Let both stand or fall together, for before high heaven, both are equally guilty.

If the woman is to be cast out and condemned to the "scrap-pile" of society for her wrong, place the mark of the beast upon the man, the man who seduced her, cast him down by her side and compel him to stay there until he too has paid the uttermost to atone for his sin.

Parents should strive just as hard to teach the beauty and honor of purity to their sons as to their daughters. No sensible or fair reason can be offered why young men should not go to the marriage altar just as pure as they expect to meet their wives there. And it will be so when our boys are properly taught, and society, the church and the home demand the single standard of morals.

Who is responsible? — Thousands of poor prudish parents line the shores, who, with broken, crushed and bleeding hearts, cry in anguish, "Where is my wandering child tonight?" The poor, ignorant, diseased, passion-ridden children, in many cases beyond the reach of the home, society and the church, exclaim, "Oh, if I had only been told of these dangers !" All along the almost socially inaccessible rockbound shores of this sea of human passion the churches and philanthropists have built and maintained rescue and foundling homes at an outlay of millions in money. The Christian workers engaged are not and cannot save one in twenty. The foundling homes are crowded to a dangerous unsanitary overflowing with illegitimate children, whose mothers are out in the rapids of vice or entirely lost in the depths of immorality. Too long philanthropists have devoted their means to the work of rescue and have neglected the far more important and effective work of prevention. Too long have the churches opened their doors to rescue lecturers and closed them to preventative lecturers. Too long have the churches been satisfied with snatching, here and there, a forlorn piece of human wreckage from the waves of vice, instead of erecting a lighthouse system of properly educating and warning the children and youths of the land