SEX KNOWLEDGE.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 335, 23 November 1945, Page 5

SEX KNOWLEDGE.

Sir,-I must admit I was rather surprised by the turn "Enlightened Wife" gave to my letter. I hasten to assure her I am all for her. I very much admire "Enlightened Wife’s" brave facing up to a mother’s responsibility to enlighten her children in sex matters. I am all in support. With "a woman of nearly 60 with 32 years of married happiness be- . hind her" I would hate to disagree. She has the benefit of experience. What I objected to was Miss Mead’s dismissal of missionary endeavour to establish Christian ideas of sex as vain and unimportant. She appears to me to belong to the small troupe who belittle our own civilisation to extol native cultures. They little know what they do.

J.

DURNING

(Okato).

Sir-I wish to endorse every word "Enlightened Wife" has written about this subject. I have suffered the exact reverse of her experience and, regrettably, I am no exception. So hushthush was my upbringing that while living on a farm, where questions naturally come early, I learnt at the age of seven never

to_approach my parents with sex questions. When ten years old this very ignorance caused me an experience so terrifying that I was afraid to ride the lonely road to school, lying awake at night dreading it. Yet there was noone I could tell in my own home. I have children now, but I live in my married life with exactly the home surroundings that "Enlightened Wife" so-aptly describes, and justly fears, for our younger generation. To save the present-day marriages and future families, we should have trained men and women or selected doctors where young couples may seek information without any of the sensations of shame and inferiority that always follow continued marital sex failure.

BETRAYED

WIFE

(via Frankton

Junction),