Essay: ON TEACHING CHILDREN ABOUT SEX

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To most parents, such advice, however realistic, will still sound alarming. It seems to translate easily into an all-too-simple rule: "Premarital sex is all right if you are in love and faithful—for a while. And if you can't be good, be careful." Even aside from traditional questions of right or wrong, virtue or sin, this seems to place an inordinately heavy burden of decision and judgment on the young.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that this formula does sum up the principles—often the only principles—that many young people in fact try to follow. Parents who feel that these principles are inadequate cannot and should not look to the schools for decisive help. They will have to redefine or reassert their own morality in the home and in society at large. And that will take a great deal more than sex education, or education of any kind.