Know All the Facts About Sex Before You Get Married

Do you and your fiancé know the essential physical facts about the sex organs of men and women? Despite the comparative sophistication of modern youth, teachers in the field report that a knowledge of even simple physical facts is often garbled and confused. Has either or both of you ever had a good course, or even read a good book on the physiology of reproduction? Do you know the correct names for the parts of the genital structures? Do you understand your anatomy and physiology sufficiently to enable you to understand the physical problems connected with sexual harmony within marriage, and the regulation of the size of your family? Can you, for example, distinguish intelligently between menstruation and ovulation?

The currently controversial subject of birth control involves ecclesiastical implications into which we cannot enter here. But if you do wish to decide the size of your family yourselves, certain knowledge is essential. Do you understand the nature and the effective use of the more common mechanical devices, and the non-mechanical possibilities such as the "rhythm method," and how effective and reliable they are?

Our age will be known in history as the age which discovered sex. We discovered it in the sense that the "forty-niners" discovered gold in California. The human race had known about it long before. We had known about it. After all, we had some contact with animals, even in early childhood. Then all these babies who were being born all around us must have gotten started somehow. The old explanations of the stork or the doctor bringing the baby could not be kept up for long. As we grew older, whispered scandals added some notes of explanation. After all, our elders had to give us a certain amount of instruction in order to tell us what we were not supposed to do. But all this information put together gave us only a partial and limited picture of the total place of sex in life. Most of what was known even then was kept from us by a combination of evasions, and a rigid censorship of free discussion and education. Only recently have we begun to be free to teach and to learn "*He facts of life" in their larger ramifications.

The result has been an almost complete reversal of attitude within a generation. Once the dam was broken there began to pour forth a veritable flood of lectures, pamphlets and books which now leave little to the imagination. Sex is now declared to be not only wholesome, but within marriage, at least, very important and necessary. Some have even gone so far as to say that a marriage will stand or fall with the adequacy of the sexual adjustment. Yes, we have discovered sex with rather vigorous enthusiasm.

Discovery is not the same, however, as adequate knowledge. After Columbus discovered America it took nearly four centuries to explore what he had found. So it is with sex. Our generation may have discovered it, but the exploration of scientific knowledge has hardly begun. Neither young people nor old people, nor scientific investigators know very much about it as yet. Even the most extensive and best-known studies only scratch the surface. It may be desirable to know how many people behave this way or that way, just as it might be desirable to know how many people have the measles or typhoid, or how many are fat, thin, tall, or short. But the really important questions are, why do people act this way or that? What does their behavior mean? What effect does their behavior have upon them and other people? In what sense and in what ways does it help or harm? These most important questions we have only begun to explore. Before us lies a vast continent of human nature and relationships still largely unknown.

Yet despite the limitations of our knowledge, there are some matters related to sex which a couple should consider before they marry. They should make sure that they both have the simpler facts which are important, and that they know what standards of conduct they may expect from each other.