A few months ago, my mother uncovered a college paper that my Grandmother Bailey (her mother) had written when she was at Oberlin College. She saw that the topic was right up my alley, so sent it along to me. The paper is titled “Building Healthy Sex Knowledge” and was written for a child development […]
Tag: sex education
Personal Hygiene for Young Women and Men (1920s)
For my day job, I work at the Library of Congress helping archive the Internet, and I don’t often get to see the physical stuff in our collections. So when a colleague tipped me off to some amazing films from the 1920s that had apparently been in our nitrate vault and scored by another colleague, […]
Shopping for Books the Old Fashioned Way
“Sixth Thousand Now Ready!” “An Important Book for the Family and School!” “An Attractive and Useful Gift” read the ad, found in the back of the 1894 printing of The Physician’s Wife, which I recently I picked up in Baltimore. How could I not be intrigued? Ads often appear in the back of some of my […]
Where Do Babies Come From?
Q Dear Miss Abigail: Where do babies come from? Signed, Sam A Dear Sam: “The medical facts in this book were checked by Dr. Charles Birdsall…” reads the editor’s foreward to Wonderfully Made. So this little excerpt must be trustworthy, right? The book is one of six in the Concodia Sex Education Series aimed at students […]
Should a Boy Toy?
Q Dear Miss Abigail: I’m a twenty-two year old male from India. I have this habit of masturbating, very regularly. I started it three years back, after my first girlfriend ditched me. I never had sex with her. I used to feel guilty, but now I don’t. But I don’t want to go about telling […]
How Do I Explain Puberty?
Q Dear Miss Abigail: I want to explain to my daughter what puberty is. Could you help me go about it? Signed, Nancy A Dear Nancy: In our continuing saga of “vague and slightly scary old advice to help teach children about sex and puberty” (see this other question), I bring you a little chat between […]
I Think My Daughter is Having Sex
Q Dear Miss Abigail: My child appears to be having sex. She is only fifteen years old. What shall I do? Signed, Dickie A Dear Dickie: I’ve been just waiting for a chance to use an excerpt from Dr. Edith Hale Swift’s Step by Step in Sex Education, which is written in the form of a […]
An Important Difference
Boys and girls. Girls and boys. Who would imagine that they were so incredibly different? Thanks to P. J. Bruckner’s pamphlet titled How to Give Sex Instructions, which was written as “a guide for parents, teachers, and others responsible for the training of young people,” we are finally able to have a better understanding of these […]