Love's coming of age : a series of papers on the relations of the sexes.

  • Edward Carpenter
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Love's coming of age : a series of papers on the relations of the sexes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    seems almost incredible, and certainly indicates the deeply-rooted unbelief and uncleanness of our own thoughts. Yet a child at the age of puberty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and sexual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional, and serene appreciation of what Sex means (generally more so, as things are to-day, than its worldling parent or guardian) ; and can absorb the teaching, if sympathetically given, without any shock or disturbance to its sense of shame—that sense which is so natural and valuable a safeguard of early youth. To teach the child first, quite openly, its physical relation to its own mother, its long indwelling in her body, and the deep and sacred bond of tenderness between mother and child in consequence ; then, after a time, to explain the relation of fatherhood, and how the love of the parents for each other was the cause of its own (the child’s) existence : these things are easy and natural—at least they are so to the young mind—and excite in it no surpnse, or sense of unfitness, but only gratitude and a kind of tender wonderment.1 Then, later on, as the special sexual needs and desires develop, to instruct the girl or boy in the further details of the matter, and the care and right conduct ot her or his own sexual nature ; on the meaning and the dangers of solitary indulgence—if this habit has been contracted ; on the need of self- control and the presence of affection in all relations with others, and (without undue asceticism) on * See Appendix.
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