Sex in Female Childhood (From 12 to 14)

them," or confining them in a room by themselves, tends to encourage

the development of vicious habits. A single bed, both in the school

and in the home, is indispensable to purity of morals and personal

cleanliness. It tends to restrain too early development of the sexual

instinct both in small girls and small boys.

 

 

                      SEXUAL SELF-ABUSE IN GIRLS

 

Small girls, like small boys, display an intelligent curiosity as

regards the phenomena of sex at an early age. And what has already

been said regarding its improper gratification in the preceding

chapter, so far as boys are concerned, applies with equal force to

them. In their case, however, the mother is a girl's natural confidant

and friend. Self-abuse in one or another form is as common in the case

of the girl as in that of the boy. As a rule, girls who live an

outdoor life, and work with their muscles more than their mind, do not

develop undue precocious sexual curiosities or desires. At least they

do not do so to the same extent as those more nervously and

susceptibly constituted. The less delicate and sensitive children of

the country tend less to these habits than their more sensitively

organized city brothers and sisters. Girls who have formed vicious

habits are apt to indulge in the practice of self-abuse at night when