Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences, is not much
less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid purposes towards
which the individual, "but a wave of the wild sea," can be consecrated.
This question of the care of babies offers us much less excuse for its
neglect than do questions concerned with the circumstances antecedent to
the babies' appearance. Yet we are blameworthy, and disastrously so,
here also. Prudery here insists that boys and girls shall be left to
learn anyhow. That is not what it says, but that is what it does. It
feebly supposes not merely that ignorance and innocence are identical,
but that, failing the parent, the doctor, the teacher, and the
clergyman--and probably all these do fail--ignorance will remain
ignorant. There are others, however, who always lie in wait, whether by
word of mouth or the printed word, and since youth will in any case
learn--except in the case of a few rare and pure souls--we have to ask
ourselves whether we prefer that these matters shall be associated in
its mind with the cad round the corner or the groom or the chauffeur who
instructs the boy, the domestic servant who instructs the girl, and with
all those notions of guilty secrecy and of misplaced levity which are
entailed; or with the idea that it is right and wise to understand
these matters in due measure because their concerns are the greatest in
human life.
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