Chapter I: The Opening Door of Womanhood

_Adolescence._—It is the habit of age to call youth the golden era, to speak of that period as the halcyon days of life, and to look back over its tempestuous beauty with eyes misted by years and longing. It is one of man’s most regrettable traits that he is ceaselessly yearning back toward the past. For the few brief years of childhood, he is content in the present, and looks, if he looks at all, toward the beckoning doorway of the future. Once he has reached that threshold, he commences the endless looking back, until we have a race of Lot’s wives whose souls, at least, are static from backward glances. This is particularly true of women, though it applies in general to the whole race. The child with her dolls is happy, and in her play looks toward the future when she will be a grown woman. Every girl who mothers her dolls has a yearning toward motherhood, but let the period for that estate arrive, and she looks back tearfully on her carefree childhood. Once the girl has stepped, irrevocably, into the narrow pathway of adolescence that leads to the opening door of maturity, she commences looking back. The adolescent girl pins up her hair, or bobs it, today, and gazes regretfully at the curls of childhood. She packs away her dolls, and passes the closet where they are sleeping with a sigh. The widespread fad of fancy dolls that has swept the country during the past few years has a double significance. Largely, it points toward starved motherhood. It is the irrefutable sign that there are thousands of women who long for children, but who, for various reasons, deny that urge. It points to something else, too. It is the answer to that harking back to childhood, when dolls were the only children, and all the world was play.

This is regrettable. Looking back to the past is a deadening pastime. No one period of life should be more delightful than another. The rounded person lives fully in the present, and looks toward the future happily, with no yearnings toward the past. The chief reason why people look back, rather than forward is that, through faulty education, unfortunate miscomprehension, they spoil the present and see no hope for doing otherwise with the future. If we study the matter sensibly, we will see that we do not actually want to go back to the past for its actual activities; what we want is the happy carefree life we then enjoyed. But, if people lived rightly and thought correctly, they would not want to go back from a state of comparative freedom to a period of supervision. No normal, healthy adult wants to go back to a period wherein all of his thinking is done for him. It is merely an effort to dodge the cares of life. But, if our lives are properly regulated, and if we are properly educated, our cares will not hamper us, and gathering years will increase rather than decrease our enjoyment of living.

This period of unrest, of wanting something that we have not, commences between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. In exceptional cases, it may be hastened or retarded. At first, it is mere unrest, and the mind fastens on the past, as something that it knows, only because it must have something to hold to, something to explain its uneasiness. Actually, at this time, it is the unrest of ignorance, the desire to know the causes and reasons for everything, especially ourselves. The adolescent girl, seeing, for the first time, most of the life about her, is puzzled, and longs to understand. She is restless because she cannot do so. Powers and faculties that only existed potentially before, now come into being. New relations are established, and for the first time, the ego recognizes itself, and takes the center of the stage.

Heredity has done its part toward molding the young life, and slips quietly into the background. Childhood environment has started the girl’s development, especially those intricate and usually hidden bonds that exist between the daughter and the parents. A physical change commences its course, a change that will slowly guide the girl from childhood to womanhood. Physically, mentally, morally, the woman is gradually being born. From the soft clay of girlhood is springing what the woman will be. The model is being fashioned from within, where the girl’s real nature and hereditary instincts are doing their work, and from without, where environment and outside influence are doing their best to guide the new person. Tradition has said that love is blind. More truly might it be said that youth is blind. Youth starts toward life with eyes raised toward idealism whose glow blinds eyes already sightless through ignorance. The problem is, will those eyes, when they finally open upon such reality as the world knows, fall dejectedly upon gray ashy ruins, blackened by the now cold fires of that idealism, or will they gaze joyfully on a not too perfect world, but one still bright with hope and beauty? The burden of the choice lies, during these years, with the people around the girl. Tactful, sympathetic advice, and guidance by those whose lives touch hers will do much toward making a rounded woman of her, and will help to open her eyes on a world she will want to live in. Ignorance and false teachings on the subjects that vitally concern her may leave her a warped and twisted being, dragging weary feet down tedious years.

_Essential Education._—Throughout a large portion of the world, education in sexual matters is the accepted custom. Most of the savage tribes have it. Oriental civilizations still practice it, and are the better for it. Our ancestors, until the birth of Christianity, knew it. The Old Testament lays down frank and open laws upon the subject. But the rites of sexual education had groped so far toward licentiousness, that Christianity, banning the latter, smothered the former. The Christian doctrine, aiming professedly toward cleaner living, taught that the body was worthless, and pointed toward a future life, when only the spirit would count. Since the body was worthless, and since catering to its appetites led to much so-called wrong, it followed that the body, and all that pertained to it, must be vile; only the soul was sacred. Out of this there gradually grew a taboo. Discussion of this vital subject was prohibited. It is this prohibition that has done the greatest harm to the Christian men and women of today.

Any sensible person can see that this teaching is worse than false. It, not the body, is vile. Slowly, after nineteen hundred years of a lie, out of the blood of the World War, the truth is springing, phoenix-like. The lie has been the more insidious since men have never practiced it. The pale Galilean light of chastity has wavered like an _ignis fatuus_ over a distant horizon; men, gazing toward it, have stumbled into pitfalls that had otherwise been mountain heights. The joy of the body lived and grew in spite of taboos, but, like a flower doomed to bloom in a cellar, it flourished wanly, and raised its anemic tendrils in the foul blackness of subterfuge.

Only within the last decade has man come to see the foulness of this course. Slowly the race is lifting itself out of this slough of deceit. It rests with each parent to see that the rising continues, until the day dawns when every girl and boy will know all of the facts of life, and know them correctly, in all their shining beauty. Then, and then only, will that _ignis fatuus_ fade in the new dawn of a brighter light.

It is the silence of the parents that does the most toward making life seem sordid, and brutal. If the parent maintains an obdurate and sanctified silence, as the majority do, will the girl grow into a second Mary? Unfortunately, yes. But science has so far enlightened the race, that we no longer are willing to accept stories of virgin births, and are too apt to see, with cynical eyes, the Angel Gabriel in any of the young men about town. Mothers expect girls to wait for this necessary knowledge until they are married, and then to learn it from the young husband. But all too frequently, the husband is as sadly ignorant as his bride. What then? Will some miracle point the way to happiness? Sadly enough miracles are infrequent. Both young people blunder on, usually into misery.

But even the most assiduous silence on the part of the parent rarely prevents the girl from learning some part of the truth. As soon as the little girl commences going to school, she is exposed to the danger of learning these vital facts, and learning them in a sordid way. Even the most careful of parents cannot keep from arousing a child’s curiosity concerning its body. Chance remarks are overheard; when the child reaches the school age, words seen in books, heard in conversation, send the curious one to the dictionary; worst of all, information is freely scattered by their less restrained and more evil-minded companions. These facts, seen through the fouling haze of secrecy and miscomprehension, tantalize the youthfully curious mind. The young girl, hating to appear less knowing than her acquaintances, adopts the secrecy of her elders, and prowls through books and dictionaries; her mind, like a mole, chases the truth through the dark of ignorance, until what truth she finally gleans is smudged with the filth of the streets, and dulled by an aura of shame. They learn bad habits, alone or by falling into unhealthy relationships with other girls, if they do not know the facts.

This accurate knowledge, properly given, is the more valuable, if to it is added a restrained example on the part of the parents. If the mother’s actions are admirable, this example is a louder preachment to the young daughter than any amount of words. Nor need a mother shrink from telling her daughter the simple facts of life. These mysteries can be pointed out in a beautiful way through the life-stories of animals and plants. The simple tale of how young birds and kittens arrive in the world can be made into a lovely symbol of the girl’s own origin, and will point out to her the role that she, in the normal course of nature, will fulfil.

_Adolescent Training._—The essential thing to guard in the adolescent girl is her bodily health. If the body is properly cared for, the sexual nature will take care of itself. Barring some physical deformity, sexual life grows strongly and healthily of its own accord. A normal woman is capable of bearing at least thirty children. This is neither desirable nor economically possible, today. The task is to rein sexual energy, not to stimulate it. Exercise drains off this energy, which, in the girl, is chiefly an undefined longing. Enjoyable occupations keep the girl’s mind occupied and prevent that restlessness that is so taxing to the adolescent person. All young girls should be encouraged in participating in sports. They develop a healthy body, increase grace, and occupy a nervous mind.

Occupying the mind does not mean keeping it ignorant. The most curious mind is usually the most empty one, provided the emptiness is not due to sheer laziness. Young minds are very empty, and the only sure way to fill them properly is to give them complete and adequate knowledge. If the adolescent girl knows the true clean facts of sex, she will not spend surreptitious hours poring over filthy books. This ignorance not only pollutes the young mind, but helps to ruin the young eyes. Girls seek eagerly for trashy books, then read them in bed, at night, and hide them during the day, for fear of being caught with them. The moralists of today who would suppress all of the so-called foul literature would achieve their purpose if, instead of indicting these books, they turned their energies to teaching youth the decent facts. This would immediately decrease the market for such trash, for the educated mind gets no thrill out of such books. These books pander to the ignorant, the curious-minded. The young people seize them, and read them avidly, in the vain hope of learning something of this whispered mystery. They are invariably disappointed. There would be nothing really wrong with such books, if they actually told any facts. They don’t—they merely add fuel to an already hot fire.

The girl’s mind, properly equipped with a knowledge of the realities of life, should be fed on good books. She should be encouraged in the studies that she prefers. It is a great mistake of parents to force their children to learn certain things, whether the children want to or not. If the girl shows a fondness for languages, let her study them; if she leans toward astronomy, let her learn what she can about it. True, it may be an interest of which she will soon tire, but some of it will linger in her mind, and the mental training will be invaluable. As much as possible, turn the adolescent mind toward things outside of itself. Interest the young girl in the world about her, and thus avoid that super-development of the ego that leads to the lonely introspective person.

The period of adolescence brings with it a complete physical change. It is now that menstruation begins. If the girl has been kept in ignorance up to this time, she should be told all the truths of life now. Also, her health should be guarded more carefully than ever before. This does not mean coddling; it merely means proper attention to food, exercise, and rest. Many girls are very much weakened by this condition at first. Plenty of fresh air and sleep are the best remedies. Of course, if the girl continues to suffer from this period, she should be put in the hands of a capable doctor. Even in these broadening days, this remains the one subject that the most frank-minded persons refuse to discuss. This absurd secrecy has given rise to the most harmful myths on the subject. There is no reason why a healthy woman should suffer during this time. It is a natural physical phenomenon that takes place once every twenty-seven days. Certain conditions and certain climates sometimes lengthen or slightly decrease the time between, but no pain should ever result. The most that should be expected is a certain lassitude during the flow. If a girl or woman does suffer pain, she should immediately consult a physician. Many women go on through life suffering at this time rather than talk to a doctor on the subject. This is a ridiculous reticence. Under normal conditions the flow will last three or four days.

Due to this strange silence on the subject, many absurd notions and taboos have grown up concerning this period. Many women still believe that they must not bathe, walk, or indulge in any form of exercise during this time. Provided the woman is healthy, this is untrue. During these periods, the body is more susceptible to colds than at other times; therefore it is unwise to expose oneself. A warm bath will have no ill effect, and moderate exercise will do no harm. There is no reason why one’s daily routine should be altered in any way by this condition. The main thing to remember is to keep the body clean, and to take such sanitary precautions as will insure comfort and ease, and will prevent any unpleasant odors. Such equipment as is necessary is obtainable in every drug store.

It is highly important for the girl who is experiencing these periods for the first time to avoid undue excitement, and above all, any emotional indulgences. The girl who is equipped with the proper knowledge will realize this, and will know that the proper restraint at this period will insure her a healthy future. Sexual indulgences during the adolescent period weaken the nervous system, and generally enervate the body.

Adolescent girls are invariably sentimental and romantically inclined. The parents should not laugh at this display—rather they should guide it into right channels. Faulty sex-consciousness is grounded in this ridicule of the parents. If her sentimental dreams are sneered at, the girl does not cease having them; on the contrary, they increase in volume, but she hides it all, and ultimately grows shy and reticent. She begins to fall in love with matinée idols, with the older men about her, with some favorite teacher. This is natural, and should not be suppressed. If she has proper sex-knowledge, and is considerately treated by her parents, she will soon grow out of this stage into a normal womanhood..

A girl’s first sweethearts should not be jeered at. If her youthful friendships are encouraged among nice boys, if her choice of a first “beau” is accepted as natural, and not made fun of, she will avoid that sex-consciousness which so frequently leads to secrecy in such affairs, and to ultimate misery. Do not fear to have your daughter go out with young boys. See that her friends are honorable boys, and that she knows what life means, and no harm can come to her. Parents recoil in horror from the fear of a youthful misstep, and scorn the unfortunate girl who makes it. They never realize that the fault lies with them. Nine-tenths of the unfortunate errors made by young girls and boys are made through ignorance. If a girl has no knowledge of life, she is an easy victim of any man’s or boy’s pleadings. Her curiosity urges her on, and once the thing is done, she, not the guilty parents, pays for the social sin.