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Page 26
Now, it is here that I earnestly desire to give you, if I possibly can,
some helpful, practical suggestions, for I feel that it is not in the
recognition of a duty, but in its performance, that the difficulty lies
which is arresting so many educated mothers at the present time.
With very young children, whether girls or boys, there should be no
difficulty whatever. They are too young to understand. Only, when they
come to you asking their innocent little questions as to where the
little baby brother or sister comes from, I would earnestly ask you
never to allow yourself, or your nurse, to inflict on them the usual
popular fables, that the baby was brought by the doctor or that it was
found under the gooseberry-bush. A child is far quicker than we think to
detect that mother is hiding something, and the first tiny seed of evil
curiosity is sown. Make no mystery about it; look your child full in the
face, and say, "My child, you have asked me a question about what is
very, very sacred. If I were to try to explain it to you, you would not
be old enough to understand; for the present you must be content to know
that the baby comes from God; how it comes mother will tell you when you
grow old enough to understand; only promise me that you will never ask
any one but mother about it." The child will then see that you are
hiding nothing, and will be satisfied to wait for the explanation that
mother has promised.
But what when the child is old enough to understand?--an age which
doubtless varies in different children, but which with boys must come
before their first school, if you are to occupy the ground of his heart
with good seed, which leaves no room for the devil's sowing.
Well, with regard to the facts of birth, I do not think we ought to find
much difficulty. You can point out how the baby seed has a soft, downy
place provided for it in the pod of the parent plant till it has ripened
and is fit to be sown, when the pod opens and lets it fall to the earth,
and it becomes a plant in its turn. You can point out that the egg in a
similar way is carried in the mother bird's body till the shell has
hardened and is fit to be laid, when she warms it with her own breast,
patiently sitting on it for days, while the father bird feeds her, till
the little chick is strong enough to break the walls of its tiny house,
and come forth and peck and fend for itself. You can explain how the
little kitten the child plays with has in the same way a safe place
provided for it in the mother's body, where it grows and grows till all
its organs are formed, and it can breathe and suck, when, like the seed
from the pod, and the chick from the egg it leaves the mother's body,
and is born, a blind and helpless baby kitten, to be fed and tenderly
cared for by the mother cat. You will explain that the baby comes in
just the same way so far as its infant body is concerned, growing like
the kitten from a tiny cell--borne by the mother till all the organs are
formed which it needs for its earthly life, when it also is born and
laid in its mother's arms, to be nourished and cared for by the love of
both father and mother, not for a few weeks, as with animals, but
through long years of helplessness. And you mean to tell me that the
sacred truth would not endear you to your child far more than the usual
cock-and-bull story about the doctor and the gooseberry-bush?
A friend of mine has three boys of widely opposite character and
temperament. Owing to circumstances, the eldest lad had to be sent to
school at an early age. Young as he was, she resolved to follow Dr.
Butler's advice and tell him the facts of birth in the way I have
suggested. On realizing the truth, the boy flung his arms round her neck
and burst into tears. But though she felt that she had done right, she
was not wholly without misgivings that she might have introduced some
objectionable talk into her nursery. When the time came to send the
second lad to school, she repeated the talk that she had had with his
elder brother. But to her surprise she found him in total ignorance of
the facts: his elder brother had never confided them to him. And so
again with the third boy. Evidently the boys had considered it too
sacred a thing to talk about--how much too sacred, then, to allow of
their joining in with the unclean gossip of schoolboys! Its only result
was to give them an added tenderness for their mother, and to make them
resent all such unclean talk as so much mud flung at her.
So far, so good. But we all of us realize that it is not the facts of
birth, but the facts of the origination of life, that form the
perennial source of obscene talk, and often of obscene action, among
boys; and it is in explaining these, without violating those instincts
of reserve and modesty with which nature herself surrounds the whole
subject, that what often seems an insuperable difficulty arises. Yet
these functions are, and must be, the very shrine of a body which is a
temple of the Lord and Giver of life; and on the face of things,
therefore, there must be some method of conveying pure knowledge to the
opening mind with regard to them. The difficulty must be with ourselves,
and not in the very nature of things themselves.
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